Reselling trademark or licensed items

[lynn5875]

Hi:

I live in Ohio an have a question regarding the laws applicable to reselling an item that has a trademark and or license. Specifically, am I in any legal violation if I buy a trademark item such as a Disney character printed on a sheet/material and then use the sheet to construct a blanket, pillow or some similar object to sell as a homemade item? The item would then be sold via internet auctions or at craft sales. The blankets are all handmade using the trademarked material as a base then adding additional material for backing and binding to effectively change the fuction of the original material. This is a strictly manual small volume operation with a total annual production of less than 500 blankets.

Thanks,

Lynn

 

[Michael Wechsler]

Originally posted by lynn5875:
I live in Ohio an have a question regarding the laws applicable to reselling an item that has a trademark and or license. Specifically, am I in any legal violation if I buy a trademark item such as a Disney character printed on a sheet/material and then use the sheet to construct a blanket, pillow or some similar object to sell as a homemade item? The item would then be sold via internet auctions or at craft sales. The blankets are all handmade using the trademarked material as a base then adding additional material for backing and binding to effectively change the fuction of the original material. This is a strictly manual small volume operation with a total annual production of less than 500 blankets.

The bottom line is what did you buy? It does not seem that the item you bought includes a license to do what you propose. If you are trying to create blankets that likely appear to be Disney merchandise then, yes, you may want to think twice about doing this. This is why these companies have licensing departments and you may want to contact them about their terms or, if that is too much of a hassle or not likely to be granted, the original idea sounds great and perhaps you just make a design that might be suggestive but not likely to cause confusion as to the origin of the merchandise being from Disney.