In all industries involving graphic design the “art” (being hardcopies, films, files, etc), belongs to the artist or employer of the designer. Creative ideas or samples of new work done by cishirts.com belong to cishirts.com. This is in keeping with the federal copyright laws that come from the U.S. Constitution, Section 8, Article 1 that went into effect on January 1, 1978.
When a drawing, copy of a design or digital file is brought to us, we are granted permission to copy the original. We return the original item to the owner. We then modify the design to produce the best possible product. The ART PREP is charged to cover our time (labor). Under no circumstances are the separations or digitized files we create in the process the property of the client. Customers pay for the decorated product and the appropriate associated costs.
At cishirts.com, art prep and screen prep fees are included into the pricing of the garments to compensate us for the time required to prepare a design for printing or embroidering. We do not charge for the designs as products. What you leave with is what you have paid for. Screens, separations and digital files are our property and remain ours whether the customer works with us or someone else.
While you may own a logo or trademark, the work we did was art and especially in embroidery, takes on several new dimensions that involve our specific expertise and artistic ability. The protection you gain through owning your trademark is that we cannot sell it to other people. You paid a “digitizing fee” for the artist’s time.