How to keep people from replicating promotion items (hats, mugs, shirts etc)

I've been working on a website design and idea with a group of other like minded people, and we plan on setting up a store (with shirts, hats, mugs, bumper stickers, etc etc.) but we wanted to know first what we would need to make sure no one else could replicate our designs/wording/name of the website to sell their own merchandise? I just want to make sure we are legally within our rights to sell the stuff we plan on selling if its completely original content, and how to keep it so we're the only ones who can.


Thanks in advance.

copyright forms can be downloaded at copyright.gov that should cover the artwork itself

If you have a distinctive brand/logo/look and feel then you can further get a trademark but that's harder to get, and you should just establish your business first and let the brand become known, as that's part of establishing a trademark.

Can you actually stop people from replicating your work? Of course not. But establishing a copyright, and then trademark if appropriate, makes it so you can sue them. Litigation hooray!

Ahh okay thanks for the info, I'll make sure to look into that. Now without the trademark they would still be able to make their own design using the same title or part of the title as what I'll be using correct? Or would the copyright protect that as well?

Copyright does not protect

* ideas (patent)
* slogans (trademark)
* brand name (trademark)

Titles usually aren't protected by anything unless you can establish a trademark. For example, consider how many songs are called simply "Fire". More complex scenarios need to be sorted in the courts. For lengthy quips you can copyright the written work separately, as if a poem.

uspto.gov is the patent and trademark office you can see that for more info

Ahhh okay I think I understand now, thanks a lot for the info!