I have an Etsy shop and want to add more things to my shop. I have been wondering if it is legal to sell the die-cuts that I create on my cricut machine?
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I am pretty sure that it would be illegal to sell them as die cuts alone, because they are copyrighted and trademarked as die cuts already. (Usually this includes: NOT INTENDED FOR RESALE, somewhere within the legal terms.)
However, if you make items to sell using the die cuts, it “MAY” be a loop hole in that, but then again maybe not!
For Example: I was selling note cards at a craft bazaar one year and I had used some rubber stamped images on my note card sets. The rubber stamps I used within my artistic creations, along with my own drawings, were stamps that I had purchased from a Stampin’ Up demonstrator the year before. Well, she was a customer at this craft bazaar and she told me that I cannot use any rubber stamped images from Stampin’ Up on anything that I was selling, because they are copyrighted and that they cannot be used within anything else that is being resold. I told her that I was unaware of that fact. The next thing I know, she had called the police to the church craft bazaar to make a report out so that she could have the Stampin’ Up copyright lawyers send me an official notification that I was breaking the law. I was mortified to say the least!
So I would check it out first! Call their toll free number and ask them, that way you will know for sure! I would hate to hear that you got removed from Etsy because you broke a rule such as this!
Good Luck To You!
As an intellectual property lawyer, the vendor was incorrect that you cannot use the stamps to create your own art. You were not copying the stamps and then selling new stamps – you were creating art using the stamp as a tool. The images you created using that tool were your own art. The vendor’s position was more like this: I made a saw. You used the saw to cut wood to build a house. So, the house is an illegal violation of my copyright/patent on the saw? Sorry, no.
These types of stamps are created and sold with the express expectation that you as a purchaser will create new crafts using their stamps. Whether you sell them, give them away, hang them on your bathroom wall, they are your new creation and you as the artist may do with them as you see fit. For examples of copyrighted work being used by an artist for the artist’s benefit, simply look to the Cambell Soup can art of Andy Warhol, the use of labels and products in collages, and on and on.
Unless you were creating new stamps that copied exactly the stamps you purchased, you were well within your rights to sell your works that used the stamps as tools to create images.
Tom