Stickers and Copyrighted Characters

As a general rule of thumb, you cannot sell your repurposed versions of other people's designs. Sometimes, you can't even give them away. Depends on what it is that you're doing. Every copyright owner has a different preference. For example, Paramount/Star Trek loves fan fiction and fan art. They're one of the very few TV series that would accept script submissions from fans that weren't members of the screenwriters guilds. Even Apple will let you set up a website with Mac as part of the domain name as long as you're not misrepresenting their brand - but you can't name yourself Apple anything. Parodies are in a whole other sphere. Not sure how you'd list your packs in the store. You could have funny versions of Batman, but it would not be legally kosher to refer to it as Batman. Many many years ago, Playboy sued many online "adult' sites for using the term "playboy" in their meta tags - and they won - and won big. So even though the word playboy was in the American venacular long before Hugh Hefner started his magazine, these outfits were riding the coattails of that brand.

Think of it this way. Let's say you create a cartoon character based on your childhood dog. The cartoon becomes a hit - which is great, and you make money with it and other people around the world are now famliar with your sweet childhood friend. All the more awesome. Then someone who appreciates your artwork decides they want to make a parody of it. If they share it on Twitter and it's not defamatory, not much you can do. If they start selling it - that's a whole other matter. They are now misrepresenting your sweet dog, your theme - a character you basically created, and making money off of it. Long diatribe to say it's probably a good idea to avoid this. It's just going to cause frustration. We are in a letigious society.