How to deal with copyright and trademarked concepts/design elements.
Copyright and trademarked design elements can lead to a pile of trouble if you go down the wrong path. In this answer, we will articulate clearly what you should steer clear of and will offer an idea for how you could think about your design if you so wanted to:
Steer clear of:
- Trademarked logos or Copyrighted content that you do not own or have the rights to reproduce
- Trying to circumvent copyright or trademarked concepts by recreating artwork. Copyright and IP cover even the concept of the element, meaning that just because you recreated the artwork or concept, as long as it is still noticeable and apparent that it is a rendition of the copyright/trademark concept, it could still be infringing.
- Overall, messing with large studios is a bad idea. They have large legal teams should you even mis-step a bit. Because of this, BE does retain the right to not print any designs, logos, or concepts that it construes as even possibly infringing on another entity's IP.
How can you design without infringing:
- The only legal method to really be clear is to ensure that the use falls under "Fair Use". The only real option here that would cover a print would be the concept of Parody.
You can read more on what constitutes Parody here.
You can read more about Fair Use here.