Munro Leys partner Jon Apted made it clear to small business owners and aspiring entrepreneurs at the USP Entrepreneurial Fair that copyright only applies to original work.
Apted who runs the Intellectual Property Department at Munro Leys says if you copy someone else’s work even as a parody, it won’t be copyright protected unless it is sufficiently original.
He says he had this problem with the Grogfather t-shirts.
Apted says this was quite a popular t-shirt amongst the young and hip fashionistas but then somebody at a big outlet saw it and copied it.
He says this outlet started to sell these t-shirts and the people who came up with the idea asked him to help them stop the outlet from selling the t-shirts.
Apted further adds they could not do it because they had used an image that predominantly belonged to somebody else.
The USP Entrepreneurial Fair is open to the public free of charge.
It will finish tomorrow at the USP Japan ICT Centre.
The theme this year is Embracing Innovation, Creating Opportunities.
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