Discussion:
What is the name of your state? california
Please read this senario to understand my questions:
say person A has a concept for a save the trees campaign. He decides that he is going to go global with this idea as its a global issue. so he develops an idea where he is going to sell t shirts with pictures of all the various types of trees in the world with the slogan saying "save the trees" on the tee.
the same tree will not be printed more that 1 shirt. now, there are 100s of 1000s of trees in the world so its going to take some time to obtain a pictures off all the trees. he has obtained 40,000 tree image and he starts to sell these t shirts and markets and adverts the t shirt globally and it really takes off and becomes a fashion fad in some countries.
B,C + D see the interest and hystira of this concept so they decide to also take photos of trees and make t shirts and sell under the same concept with different wording i.e "plant more trees".
they target areas not yet reached buy A (original developer of the idea) and therefore after some time knowbody wants to buy the t shirts as the concept in not original anymore and they dont know who is the genuine company of the concept. this undermines the As business.
Or
It could also happen that the idea is in the early stages of getting off the ground and B,C +D see the potential and have more resourse and contacts than A to launch the idea. This results in B, C + D creating awarness of the concept and selling all the t shirts as people see them as the developers of the concept and A going out of business.
( ha ,ha, after reading over above, this is a actually a bad example insofar as someone wanting to save the trees. they would nt print on 40000 t shirts or advertise, this would contradict the concept. anyway its sufficient for what im trying to get across)
I have a t shirt idea that involves using photograps on t shirts and i also have a mission statement, so to speak,to also go on the t shirt. the problem is when i get things in order to start printing and selling these t shirts, i can see multiple t shirts printers copying the concept which will effectively undermine my business and it wont look original to a potential buyer. the other problem is that each t shirt will have a different image and other tshirt printers will try to acquire the other images before i could and this would undermine my concept.
Im affraid of the 2nd senario. Ill buy the printing equip, then start to compile a database of the images. This will require public knowledge off the idea and then before i get off the ground bigger established t shirt companies with the resoures will steal my concept and get it into the market before i can, leaving me scratching my head having spent 3 month and lots of money on it.

any thoughts on any preventitive measures i can take please?
cheers
the appentice
Answer:
FL
not a lawyer here,... just 2 cent worth
why wouldn't your patent, copyright, trademarked your concept before it hits the runway?
that's what I would do, prior to a releasing date
Shuffy
Answer:
Well, it's pretty tough to protect and "idea" or a "concept" unless it falls under the categories of things that are patentable, and this most likely would not be patentable subject matter.
Copyright won't help you -- you could probably use copyright to protect someone from copying one of your shirts exactly, but copyright won't protect the "idea" of having a tree on your shirts.
Probably your best bet is to have your "mission statement" trademarked -- you wouldn't be able to keep others from printing t-shirts with trees on them, but you could keep others from using your trademarked mission statement. You might want to go to and start educating yourself on trademarks or, better yet, talk with a trademark attorney.
A couple of points -- it is going to be difficult and expensive to acquire protections worldwide, so you may want to start with a particular country -- the U.S., for example -- and then expand as needed, rather than try to get protections everywhere at once. You can read up on the Madrid Protocols on the USPTO website, that's the new "international" trademark application.
Another issue concerns where you are obtaining the images to the trees from -- if the images are ones you did not take ytourself, you'll likely need permission to use the images or face potential liability for copyright infringement.
Answer:
cal
Ya i figured that i wouldnt be able to copyright a concept or idea. its an unusual senario, as if i just had one image to copyright that would be fine but in my case there is 100s of 1000s of which i wont have obtained before i start selling the t shirts. if my concept does take off in one country it can travel across countries quite fast by word of mouth and that leaves my business and concept wide open to theft as i cant protect images that i dont already have and even if i did have evey image before starting it wouldnt be feasible to copyright each one.
I think your right only option is to try and trademark the slogan if its not taken already for a different purpose.
cheers