Using Companies Logos Is it legal?

paulwf

seismicryan wrote: »

My only question on this is... if you are selling products, lets say Nike shirts for example, surely you NEED to use their logos on your advertisements? When you go into a shoe shop it will have a nike sign up... must these be POS material issued by nike them selves?

In my business, our brand logo is used by our stockests, as are all of our competitors logos...

Ryan

There is a difference though. If you are an authorised stockist using legitimate suppliers they will allow you to use logos. Indeed they will go out of their way to give you point of sale material. I've never had an issue with a company letting me use their logo if it was through an authorised supplier.

The case of the OP is completely different as it is used clothing. The brands in that case are not supplying the seller (and indeed used clothing sales could decrease their sales of new items), and a lot of the brands are retail so will not sell via a third party at all.

Just as an aside the really big brands can be very protective of their logos and will prefer to supply approved point of sale to be used in an approved way rather than home made material.

As another aside the OP may find out there is a lot of resistance from the brands to selling their goods on Ebay. This has to be factored into their business plan as it isn't just about using a logo on a website.

lucylucky

kbh4031 wrote: »

Thanks everyone for your replies. Im not suprised by the answers to be honest, but I wanted to check
The guy that designs my stuff has not long left uni and is still very nieve, he is supposed to be designing me a website as well thats going to cost me over £2000, so on that note I think I need to find some one with a bit more experience for a big job like this

Thanks again x

I would hope for that amount of money he knows what he is doing.
(It appears not) - make sure you get your money's worth.

steve1980

kbh4031 wrote: »

Thanks everyone for your replies. Im not suprised by the answers to be honest, but I wanted to check
The guy that designs my stuff has not long left uni and is still very nieve, he is supposed to be designing me a website as well thats going to cost me over £2000, so on that note I think I need to find some one with a bit more experience for a big job like this

Thanks again x

I should hope he knows what he's doing if he is charging you £2k for a website!

For that sort of money I would expect a fully utilised (but basic) database driven website and any logo's that he has put on the would have to have been either recreated or the vector file been provided by the copyright owner.

Anything less, it's going to look terrible.

Will your website hold all the details for the stock that you have and automatically reduce the number of items when something sells? It should also be able to produce a stock list at the click of a button.

Horace

kbh4031 wrote: »

Thanks everyone for your replies. Im not suprised by the answers to be honest, but I wanted to check
The guy that designs my stuff has not long left uni and is still very nieve, he is supposed to be designing me a website as well thats going to cost me over £2000, so on that note I think I need to find some one with a bit more experience for a big job like this

Thanks again x

Get yourself a wordpress site and you can work on it too - it won't cost you over £2K. There are many folks out there who can create websites for you for less money. I got stung when I first started out and eventually I moved my domain to a different host and now have a wordpress site which I can amend at will. I know that at some point I will be adding a way of paying by paypal or google checkout.

So your recent graduate knows for the future - remind him that he cannot use logos that belong to established companies such as M&S etc.

terlan

There is a fair use with regards to product brands as long as you are a stockist of them and using them to sell their product, however using their logo or brand to generate traffic for sales of other goods is seen as a massive no no and companies stamp heavily on this.

It's hard to say without seeing how the logos have been used, but using a monsoon logo as a link to a list of monsoon products being sold is probably acceptable, however, using a monsoon logo in a background image, and this is the important part, beside other logos is definately not going to be acceptable to any trademark holder. Even with acceptable usage [policies, there is very stringent rules on how the logo appears, the spacing around it etc.

But at the end of the day, if a company does not defend a trademark they will lose it, as such they have to step in and will request to you remove their logo or get permission to use it, and then reformat your design to meet these requirements, all of which will cost you more money.

As to 2k for a website from a developer with no experience, sorry but thats way overpriced. Check out http://freelancers.net/ for a idea of the prices freelancers are charging in the UK for webdevelopment. or http://www.freelancer.com/ for international developers which can be lot cheaper.

For under £1k you should be able to get a basic ecommerce website optimised for SEO, with a facebook landing page, twitter layout, and a backend to allow changes to stock etc by an experienced developer. And for a few extra £ it should have a nice new mobile compatible design because that markets gonna pretty soon account for a fair chunk of your facebook traffic.

Dont risk your cash on someone with no experience, web design isnt just about making a site that looks good, its about knowing how people brwose sites, what gets them to click on certain links and why thing that take a few years to perfect and hammer down. If this is your livelyhood, get someone with a track record to do it, even if it means paying more or getting slightly less than you would get from someone who doesnt really know what he is doing.

seismicryan

paulwf wrote: »

There is a difference though. If you are an authorised stockist using legitimate suppliers they will allow you to use logos. Indeed they will go out of their way to give you point of sale material. I've never had an issue with a company letting me use their logo if it was through an authorised supplier.

The case of the OP is completely different as it is used clothing. The brands in that case are not supplying the seller (and indeed used clothing sales could decrease their sales of new items), and a lot of the brands are retail so will not sell via a third party at all.

Just as an aside the really big brands can be very protective of their logos and will prefer to supply approved point of sale to be used in an approved way rather than home made material.

As another aside the OP may find out there is a lot of resistance from the brands to selling their goods on Ebay. This has to be factored into their business plan as it isn't just about using a logo on a website.

Yes, sorry my bad I guess I forgot the part about the clothing being used... I was just thinking in general...

Ryan