Ben has just written a post dealing with copyright issues he suffered while dealing with his clothing company FrightRags. I know I have seen a ton of small tshirt shops using designs based off movies, television, corporate logos, and wondered if they were working with the copyright holder or using it without permission. It is a more common thing then most might expect. Many of these designs violate trademark and copyright laws. You may ask yourself why don’t they get in trouble, well it is mostly because they are too small to warrant spending all the legal money to stop them or they just don’t know about the company. Ben talks about his issues with New Line Cinemas and Universal but has apparently run into other copyright issues. Universal forced him to pay back a “substantial” amount of money for a tshirt design which featured Frankenstein. Ben gives some advice for those who are dancing on the edge of such designs and how to obtain licensing from movie studios. Always be very careful when you use anything for “inspiration”. Even if it is a smaller company or artist, they might have issue with what you are doing and worse, might have a case to sue.