Doing Twilight Cyber Shopping: Check Out CafePress

The folks over at Cafepress sent over this announcement:

Third time is even more of a charm for the Twilight Saga, as “Breaking Dawn” has scored the fifth most successful box office opening in history as moviegoers flocked to the cinemas to the tune of over $139 million dollars in ticket sales on opening weekend.

It seems as if the wedding theme has resonated with dedicated Twi-hards, some of whom dressed up in bridal attire to attend the film! (Designer Alfred Angelo even made a replica of Kristen Stewart’s wedding dress).

Fans are embracing their “invitation” to the wedding, and purchasing and designing their own wedding souvenirs via the Twilight portal at CafePress, the world’s customization engine.

Fans who want to commemorate their attendance at the wedding of Bella Swan and Edward Cullen can choose from some of these items:

More “Breaking Dawn” fan merchandise, visit the CafePress Twilight portal.

And in a bit of shameless self promotion, we’d love it if you helped to support the Twilight Lexicon by buying something from our own Lexicon CafePress shop! The graphics above are our top sellers!

TwiIdiot Runs Down the Best of Twilight on CafePress

You remember Gretchen from TwiIdiot? She’s the person who was picked by Collider out of over 700 applicants to write the Eclipse DVD review.

Often times trying to find a design at CafePress can be overwhelming because the search feature isn’t the greatest. Well there are a ton of sales going on over at CafePress (some that are over tonight at midnight)and Gretchen’s compiled her favorite stores and merchandise. She calls it Tasteful Twilight Gifts. It’s a way to celebrate Twilight love without an over abundance of sparkle dust…not that there’s anything wrong with sparkle dust. 🙂

We made the list at number 4:

4.  Twilight Lexicon on Cafe Press

The Twilight Lexicon fan site has a lovely Cafe Press storefront with several designs.  Here is my favorite on a throw pillow:

The design also comes on T-shirts, note cards, dog T-shirts, thongs and boxer shorts.  I think the pillow would make a nice wedding gift or go nicely in a black, white and red-themed bedroom.

And your reward for reading this far — here are the three Cafe Press discounts that are running right now.  I will update here periodically as the promotions change.

Spend $40 or more and get free shipping.  Use code: CUPID at check out.

Get 20% off Twilight-related merchandise.  Use code: BELLA at check out.

Get 20% off your order.  Use code: LOVEBUG at check out.

Get the full buying guide here, and she’s also asked people to chime in with comments of their favorite stores and merch!

20% Off Twilight Products at CafePress Through Feb2

Here’s a link to our own CafePress store, but the coupon is good at any Twilight shop in cafepress, just use the search function.

Etsy: The Fuzzy Line of Creativity and Trademark/Copyright Infringement

Two of the biggest online entities for fan creativity are CafePress and Etsy. Often for fan artists there is a tricky balance between creating an item that is inspired by a book or the movie vs. something that takes the rights of others.  It gets even trickier when you have a book in the mix because now you have a publishing company’s rights to deal with as well.

CafePress entered into an agreement with Summit to allow fans to produce fan items from the Twilight Saga. There are tens of thousands of items from water bottles to tee shirts. There are some limits, like no images from the movie, and no fangs, but you can quote the movie, and use character names.

On the other hand, Etsy has no such agreement, and this leads to confusion over what is allowable. CNET covers some of the controversy:

One of the biggest entertainment franchises in the world, for example, is almost completely absent from Etsy: the Twilight teen-vampire book and movie series. There are items that describe themselves as “Twilight inspired,” but posts in Web forums by Etsy sellers who have had Twilight-related items removed from the e-commerce site indicate that Summit Entertainment, the movie studio that owns the trademark to the Twilight franchise, has been policing Etsy for more obvious infringements.

For legal reasons, Etsy’s Feingold declined to comment on these reports or on which specific brands’ trademark holders have called up the company with takedown notices, and Summit representatives did not respond to a request for comment. But considering Summit’s history of filing suit against unofficial Twilight media, it’s not surprising.

One of the reasons why this is so complicated is because trademark holders are required to enforce their property or risk losing the trademark altogether.

“They are required to protect their trademarks, if they are to continue to have them, so that it doesn’t fall into the public domain,” explained David Foox, a onetime patent litigator who is now an artist. Foox said he’s experienced these complications from both sides. “If you have a trademark, and you registered it, it means you have carved out a part of this idea that has been developed into a brand.”

Foox said that as an artist, he sees fan creations, including those where the fans aim to profit, as a measure of success, but that as an attorney, he recognizes the legal requirement to protect trademarks.”

See more on CNET.

So what exactly can you or can’t you do? Some things are obvious. You can’t take things like the Little Brown cover art, the movie stylized writing, movie stills, photos taken by professional photographers and use them without previous permission and in all likelihood payment for using them. Those are all unquestionably trademarked items. They are infact a violation of the Etsy Terms of Service. You just can’t take those and not expect to be slapped with a takedown when the intellectual property owner finds out.

On the other hand creating a fingerless gloves similar to the ones Alice wore in New Moon and calling them “Twilight Inspired” (vs actually saying “these are Alice’s gloves”) is probably fine.  Creating a bookmark that says, “A Perfect Rainy Day in Forks” or “Volterra, Where Tourists Come In, But They Don’t Come Out.” are both probably sufficiently vague.

So what about making a pendant that quotes the spider monkey line and has Team Edward on it. What about making locket and inscribing it with “Renesmee”? …Welcome to the gray area, and THAT’s what is causing a lot of the trouble!

What also leads to trouble is that when a complaint is lodged about one item, at times an entire shop will be suspended rather than just the one item in question which results in a loss of revenue for the shop owner until the matter is cleared up. Cafepress, for example, doesn’t remove entire shops, just the item(s) in question.

Twilight isn’t the first franchise to do this. Warner Brothers, who control the Harry Potter franchise, took down all Harry Potter CafePress shops circa 2003. They sued a women having Harry Potter dinners at her restaurant. They also vigorously enforced their copyright on fansites (Ask the guys on Mugglenet what they have gone through over the years  to make various tee shirts).

Additionally, if you really want a legion of lawyers to descend try taking anything that has to do with Disney. Disney is legendary with their vigorous defense of their intellectual property. I’m sure this family business didn’t bank on the 1 million dollar lawsuit over Winnie the Pooh!

So as of now, it looks like CafePress is the safest place for Twilight fan creations. Etsy, is going to be a proverbial crapshoot.

Celebrate Eclipse CafePress Style in NYC

Tomorrow night Pel (Laura) is going to be in New York City for the midnight showing of Eclipse along with the crew from CafePress.  She’s going to be at the AMC 34th Street Theater in Manhattan.

Pel will be guest tweeting from the CafePress account, interviewing fans, and there will be some cool giveaways of CafePress products. So if you are in the NYC area, come on down and say hi!

Last week CafePress launched a way to get personalized Team Edward vs. Team Jacob merchandise. Check out the widget below. Also while you are at it, check out the  Lexicon’s Cafepress store.

Cafepress Lets You Customize Your Twilight Products

This is a first. Cafepress has always had some great Twilight merchandise available (shameless plug here for the Lexicon’s Cafepress store). Now they are improving by letting you personalize your Team Edward or Team Jacob gear. Check it out using the widget below.

It’s Cookie and E-commerce day.

This weekend is a big shopping blitz for those trying to make sure thing get to where they are going. If you are looking for Twilight items, here are where you can find them (and some coupon codes because who wants to pay full price!)

CafePress (ATTICSINROAD=coupon code for $5.00 off an order of $50 or more) You can use the coupon at any cafepress shop, but in a blazing display of self-promotion we are going to feature our and our current best selling item. 🙂

Right now the Billy Burke inspired Charlie Swan homage is a popular one. No offense to Robert Pattinson but some of us are caught up in the charms of the more seasoned actors.

So check out our CafePress shop and others featuring all sorts of Twilight themed merchandise!

The Infinite Jewelry site that has the official Bella’s bracelet and ring is having  a 10% off Christmas sale until Dec. 18th. So if you’ve been wanting the ring or the bracelet, you can get them at a discount.

The ring matches the description of the turn of the century-style ring that Edward gives Bella in Eclipse. It was designed in consultation with Stephenie Meyer. You can either have it in a white gold or yellow gold look.

The bracelet has a durable wolf charm that was also co-designed with Stephenie Meyer to make sure it was a true replica.

You can also snag official merchandise at Hot Topic and Borders. You can snag 30% off of one item with this Borders Coupon Code, and over at Hot Topic you get $20 off on an order of $75 or more, click here for that deal.

And if you’re done go see New Moon again and maybe bake some Christmas cookies!

Cyber Monday Twilight Style

For all of you who are making it a dot.com Christmas, Novel Novice has a Twilight shopping guide for you. It hits the highlights of all the major suppliers from Borders, to CafePress, to Hot Topic. You name it, they cover it, even the obscure ones. Check out their advice here.

Now for those of you spending money on CafePress, of course we’d love it if you spent it at our shop and have the graphics of our four best sellers listed above, there is a coupon for TODAY ONLY. It’s FREE4VIP and it gives you free shipping no matter what shop you pick.

CafePress New Moon Treasure Hunt

This just in from CafePress:

“I just wanted to let you know about another fun thing CafePress is doing for Twihards to win more prizes in the Twitter Twihard Treasure Hunt!  Your Twihard readers have a good chance of winning as it’s all about Twilight trivia… Although the details of the treasure hunt is not revealed just yet… here are some details:

This Friday, 11/13 only, @twilightees will be hosting a “TWITTER TWIHARD TREASURE HUNT”! It will start sometime before NOON on Friday, 11/13. Prizes will be 5 hoodies, Sigg bottles and flair for a dedicated, diehard Twilight fan! Follow @twilightees to enter and start PAYING ATTENTION this Friday to win!”

Check out the great stuff on CafePress, and of course we’d love it if you checked out the Lexicon’s own shop.

Sweet Deals at CafePress!

CafePress has a new Twitter page just for Twilight fans – http://twitter.com/twilightees . They will be posting t-shirts of the day, special deals for Twilight fans, doing give-aways, and sharing Twilight news.  According to CafePress, “For the next week or so, Twilightees will be doing a “registration drive” – to giveaway a free t-shirt (of choice) for every 50 new followers.” So, if you want a shot at a free Twilight themed shirt, follow them on Twitter, and the winner could be you.

CafePress has also given out a very cool coupon for those of you interested in the Lexicon’s CafePress shop. It is 20% off anything in our shop (except Flips and SIGGs) before tax (if any) and shipping.  The coupon is good for today until Saturday, October 24, 2009 – good only at the Twilight Lexicon shop. The coupon code is: TWILEXICON

Here’s a helpful hint. If you are attending any upcoming conventions, you’re going to need a tote bag. The Lexicon shop’s  tote bags hold lots of goodies, plus they are a lot easier for an actor to sign than a shirt. We have tons of great products, so check us out.  Some of our more popular designs are shown below, regardless the coupon is valid for any purchase from our shop.

Also if you see a design that you like, but it’s not currently on the product that you want, let us know and we’ll arrange it if possible!