Man, if that was their strategy, I’d be the first to order one. (plus my sales would probably go UP)

I’m beginning to think I’d rather just say, “screw iT” and invest all my hypothetical court time in making a pile of new shirts this month. It’s not like I don’t have a dozen of them designed and in a queue, just waiting for shelf space in my office.

Special note to Todd: you have great opinions and lots of helpful facts, but you come off sounding really condescending! I understand you’re trying to help, but a lot of other people in life might not. That’s a lesson I learned the hard way in college.

To add insult to injury, they could refer to a shirt of Indy Rock Pete as “The Space Demon Shirt.”

What you’re doing is pretty harmless, to be sure… But trademark law requires trademark holders to be brutal ogres

Right, so obviously trademark law is the problem, and it needs to be altered so that people are not punished for doing harmless things.

So I’m going to ask that unless:

a) You are a lawyer (please provide your area of specialization and which bar you are admitted before);
b) You can cite relevant case law (WestLaw or equivalent)

that you refrain from declaring who is correct in this case. Feel free to discuss the philosophical/artistic implications, but findings of fact are a matter for the professionals.

Stop insulting people’s intelligence. Claiming that the R2 image is a “trash can” and that the Chewie shirt isn’t deliberately designed to look like a Star Wars reference, is going to be about as successful for you as walking into a meeting with them and talking to them very slowly using words of one syllable and patting them on the head like drooling retards, while you smirk and wink at your friends. Claiming the TIE fighter was supposed to be a Space Invaders image might have worked, except for Exhibits A and B which make it obvious that it’s not. Now, whatever you might think of their ethics and value to society (and you might even be right) most lawyers are not actual retards. You’re not fooling them. You know that you’re riffing on Star Wars, your customers know you’re riffing on Star Wars, and Lucasfilms’ lawyers know you’re riffing on Star Wars. And so will the judge. Are you familiar with the term “contempt of court”? You seem to be soaking in it.

As for the “fair use” defense, you’re not even close. Fair Use under copyright law allows you to quote a sample of a larger work for the purpose of scholarly commentary. This ain’t that. Under trademark law, it allows you to reproduce others’ trademarks for the sake of making a product comparison, and requires you to explicitly acknowledge their trademarks. You aren’t doing that, either. You’re making gag Star Wars t-shirts. Putting someone else’s images on a product in order to sell it for profit is pretty much a cut-and-dried no-no.

What you’re doing is pretty harmless, to be sure. You’re not stealing food from the mouths of George Lucas’ children or anything. But trademark law requires trademark holders to be brutal ogres, willing to steal the food from the mouths’ of others’ children if they find someone infringing those trademarks. If they don’t, the trademarks become invalid, and it’ll become difficult for them to go after producers of bootleg merchandise and so forth. It may not be fair, but it’s how the law is written. And it’s still a far cry from being the end of a “free” country; you can still satirize and parody things. You just have to do it as actual satire and parody, not as gag t-shirts sold for profit.

You had some clever ideas, they were funny, and you ran with them. Good prank. Very punk-rock; you have my respect. But your prank just got caught. So stop trying to weasel your way out of it by pretending to not be nearly as clever as you obviously are, and insulting the intelligence of the folks who caught you. You can’t win this for the simple reason that you did the prank. So be a mensch, admit it, and… cease and desist.

Wouldn’t be the first time.