Let’s have a peek into the mists of the Spreadshirt crystal ball and see what the future holds in store in terms of designs that will do well in October. Our loyal and faithful in-house oracle reveals sound inside knowledge, and you’d be well advised to heed to the suggestions offered in this month’s design tip section. Read up on scary Halloween tips and October clues now.
Spread Spooky
October 31st is the night when zombies, werewolves and the like come creeping out of the shadows to roam our streets with lovely Halloween prints on their T-shirts. Yes, you read that right: since people scour our Marketplace for Halloween designs like it’s the next best thing to bat wing and eye of newt, this is your chance to offer eerily beautiful Halloween designs that enable customers to personalize T-shirts, hoodies and more gear for Halloween. Think zombies, skeletons and blood smeared mummy bandages – all’s fair in Love and Halloween. Want more? Here we go: festering wounds, hairy warts, badly stitched scars—they’re all waiting to be combined with special print foils in glitter and glow-in-the-dark to bring out the best in your designs and text. Check out this article to see what else is possible.
One thing’s important: “Halloween” in itself is a trademark word subjected to copyrights, so please avoid using it for your creations. You can use the individual letters, though, and using symbols alluding to Halloween (bats, pumpkins, a witch’s hat and broom stick) is also a good idea. And please remember to add good tags to describe your designs! Here you are allowed to use the word “Halloween”…
Back to the Future
Remember Marty McFly, Emmett Doc Brown and Biff Tannen? Then you’re one of many people who’ve seen all 3 parts of “Back to the Future” at least 3 times, and many of your customers are the same. October 21st is the day when Marty drove the DeLorean back to the future, and “Back to the Future” designs will prove great to celebrate the occasion. We want your best ideas for hover boards, robots, Enchantment Under the Sea and other futuristic idea to travel back in time to our Marketplace. What’s more, retro 1980s sci-fi ideas are totally en vogue right now, so unleash your creativity and take it back to the future!
We hope we could inspire you to come up with something neat for October! What the latest design ideas you uploaded to the Marketplace or your Shop? Let us know below in the comments!
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The USPTO refuses to issue registered trademarks for anything that’s “too generic”, and few things are more thoroughly generic and non-trademarkable than the common name of a major holiday like Halloween in reference to the holiday itself.
The approved and active registered trademark I quoted in my comment above, related to the “Halloween” movie series, likely had to be worded the way it was (to explicitly claim only protection related to the movie’s content and to exclude claims of protection in contexts referring to the holiday) to avoid a swift and certain rejection by the USPTO.
I’m pretty sure it’s impossible to obtain a registered trademark for the name of a major holiday when referring to the holiday itself, and I’m also pretty sure a common-law trademark of that type would never have any hope of standing up in court either. Also as I stated above, copyright law is completely irrelevant here.
So again, please specify which trademark you’re referring to, because I doubt there is one. Thanks.
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This blog entry says “One thing’s important: “Halloween” in itself is a trademark word subjected to copyrights, so please avoid using it for your creations.” Copyright doesn’t apply to words; I think you meant to say “subject to trademark protection”.
However, I searched the USPTO’s TESS registered trademark search system for “HALLOWEEN” trademarks for clothing goods, and all I found was one referring to the horror movie series “Halloween”, but that one expressly says right in the trademark registration text: “NOT PERTAINING TO HALLOWEEN THE HOLIDAY, BUT PERTAINING TO CHARACTERS AND THEMES FROM A SERIES OF HORROR AND SUSPENSE MOVIES.”
This seems to imply we CAN use the word “Halloween” as long as we’re not referring to characters or themes from the movie, and as long as I’m not missing an entirely different “Halloween” clothing trademark somewhere.
So, can you tell me which trademark you’re referring to? Thanks.
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