This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
What's up friends, listeners, community. My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is Side Hustle School. I'm so glad you're out there. Thank you for being part of our global community of people who are all interested in increasing freedom through the form of a money-making project, an income-generating project that you start without quitting your job.
That's what it's all about, using the skills you have without going into debt, without spending a lot of money at all. That's what we're talking about in one form or another every single day. Now, today's question, should I copyright my sex-positive apparel ideas? Well, actually these ideas aren't mine. I don't have any sex-positive ideas or apparel ideas at all.
But one of our listeners in Los Angeles does. She's been working on a plan to sell novelty clothing featuring intelligent innuendos, all right? She's wondering about her next step. She's wondering specifically about a question regarding copyright. Now, once you start diving into an idea like this, you have three sets of decisions to make.
You've got the creative process, you've got the strategy and logistics. And logistics can mean a lot of different things, but so can strategy, so can creative process. So naturally there's some decisions that overlap these categories. And specifically here, Alyssa, our listener, is wondering about copyright and otherwise protecting the intellectual property of her designs. So that's what we're gonna talk about in this question.
It's coming up in just 30 seconds. [Music]
Hi, this is Alyssa Carroll from Los Angeles, California. And I've been listening to the show "Not Unstopped" for about three weeks since my fiance and I decided to turn a running joke into a side hustle. We're launching Ruffled Pages Apparel, which is novelty clothing and more from a group of sex-positive, LGBTQ+ affirming, feminist pun aficionados. Ruffled Pages Apparel is here to make you smile with our intelligent innuendos for all.
Chris, my question is, should we copyright the images we're using on our clothing and accessories? We hired an artist to create the images which will accompany our humorous slogans on each clothing item. We're paying the artist a small upfront fee and then a percentage of each sale for the items they've worked on. As the hiring entity, does our company even own the copyrights? Or do the copyrights belong to the artist?
Is it worth the $55 processing fee since we're just starting out and we're not even sure if we'll have sales? Thanks for listening and thank you for all of your sage advice on this podcast. It's helped me to realize that I really can fit something fun and hopefully profitable into my spare time. Thanks, bye. - Hey, this is so great.
Thanks, Alyssa, for the question. I love the idea of what is it? Sex-positive, LGBTQ+ affirming, feminist pun aficionados. That is fantastic. I also like the name Ruffled Pages.
Listeners, you can go to ruffledpages.com. There's not a whole lot there right now as I'm recording the answer to this question, but presumably there will be at some point soon. So check it out, ruffledpages.com. As for the question, there are some clear answers here. It is the kind of thing I should say where you can get into a really complicated process and start looking up all kinds of documents and pay lawyers hourly fees and such.
So it's not that this topic lacks complexity 'cause it can't have that, but you can also say, well, here's a simple answer that's gonna work for a lot of people. And the simple answer is it should be clear in your agreement with the artist that you own the intellectual property. So Alyssa herself or whatever company she's forming, that entity should own the intellectual property. And that's very normal, right? It's actually nice that they're paying the artist a royalty.
I'm not sure if they just want to do that or they see it as part of an equitable partnership. Normally that would not be the case. A more common approach would be to just pay an artist a flat fee. Like most designers do not receive royalties for something like this. And if anything, the fact that they're continuing to get paid for something they've created does make that copyright issue slightly murkier, which is why it is important to be clear in the agreement that you own the intellectual property, IP.
Now, I want to actually look at one of my agreements I used when working with a contractor, and this is just some kind of stock language, but it basically covers this issue. And I have a clause that says intellectual property, all copyrights, trademarks, trade secrets, intellectual property around whatever this project is, side hustle school, let's say, are the sole property of myself in this case. And it says contractor can only use such property for the purpose of this agreement and any other agreements between the parties. So something like that should be all you need to make it clear. Now, as for the copyright itself, as I said, we could go down this issue a long time.
That's a little more tricky because your work is already copyrighted without paying a fee. Like people can't just steal it directly and then resell it. That's considered what's known as automatic protection. But that's not the same as copying the idea and creating something similar. And to get additional protection from the US Copyright Office, it typically is more than $55.
They actually charge an hourly fee. I believe it's $200 with a one hour minimum. And then after that you pay $55 for each additional certificate. So in an attempt to keep this part simple, I would encourage you and anybody else interested to check out copyrightalliance.org. Copyrightalliance.org is lots of resources there.
You can also go directly to copyright.gov. And there are PDFs that show all kinds of information, the detailed fees and such. But I think the first part of what I said is gonna cover most of this question, right? So just make sure your agreement with the artist is really clear that you own the intellectual property. Good luck.
I look forward to following ruffle pages. I'll let us know how it goes. And listeners, if you've got a question, well, you know where to go, sidehustleschool.com/questions. I always love to hear what you're up to. I hope you will continue to listen.
You can subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is "Side Hustle School." [Music]
From the Onward Project.
