DMCA

Last updated: 14 November 2026

Reel Tee respects other people’s creative work and expects the same from everyone who uses reeltee.shop. Every design in the store is an original. This page explains how to tell us if you believe something on the site copies your copyrighted work, what your notice needs to contain, and what happens after you send it. It follows the notice-and-takedown process of the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act, usually shortened to DMCA. For trademarks, brand names and other rights that are not copyright, see our Intellectual Property Policy.

1. What this page covers

Copyright protects original creative work once it is fixed in some form: a drawing, a photograph, a piece of writing, a graphic. On this site, the things that could be the subject of a copyright notice are:

• the product designs printed on the tees, hooded long sleeves, hoodie, sweatshirt, trucker hats and mugs;
• product images and previews;
• the homepage artwork, including the drawn tackle box on the dock, the brass plate in the Top Tray band and the measuring board;
• written text, such as product descriptions, the logbook strip and the help and policy pages;
• anything a customer has posted on the site, such as the text of a review where reviews are open.

There is no photo upload and no design upload anywhere on the site. Customers cannot send us artwork to print. The only thing a customer supplies for a product is a few short lines of text on the four personalised items in the Top Tray: a boat name, a hailing port, a name, a lake, a year. That wording is printed on one item for one customer and is not published on the site.

2. Copyright, or something else?

A notice goes faster when it is sent under the right heading. This table shows which page to use.

Two things are worth knowing before you write. First, copyright does not protect ideas, subjects or everyday phrases. A dock at first light, a bobber on flat water, a fish that got away: these are subjects any artist may draw, and two drawings of the same subject are not copies of each other. Anglers’ sayings such as “tight lines”, which means good luck, and “skunked”, which means caught nothing, are ordinary speech on any dock. Copyright protects the particular way a subject is drawn or written, not the subject. Second, similarity of theme is common in fishing gifts. A notice is strongest when it points to the specific elements that were taken: the same line work, the same layout, the same lettering.

3. How to send a copyright notice

The law sets out six things a notice must contain. Please include every one.

1. A signature. A physical or electronic signature of the copyright owner, or of a person authorised to act for the owner. Typing your full legal name at the end of the email counts as an electronic signature.
2. The work you say was copied. Identify your original work clearly enough for us to find it or view it: its title or a description, when you made it, and a link to where it is published or an attached copy. If several works are involved, list each one.
3. The material on our site. Give the exact address of each page on reeltee.shop where the material appears, and say which part of the page you mean: the design on a named product, a particular image, a particular paragraph. “Your fishing shirts” is not enough for us to act on. The full address of the product page is.
4. Your contact details. Your name, postal address, telephone number and email address, so that we, and the person whose content is affected if there is one, can reach you.
5. A good-faith statement. A sentence saying you have a good-faith belief that the use you are reporting is not authorised by the copyright owner, the owner’s agent or the law.
6. An accuracy statement. A sentence saying that the information in your notice is accurate and, under penalty of perjury, that you are the copyright owner or are authorised to act on the owner’s behalf.

Send the notice to support@reeltee.shop with the subject line “Copyright notice”. You may also post it to Reel Tee, 9 Livingston Dr, Howell, NJ 07731, US. Email is quicker. The postal address is for mail only.

What a clear notice looks like

A clear notice is short. It says who you are and that you own the work. It names the work, for example an ink drawing of a heron on a pier that you published on your own website on a stated date, and it links to it. It gives the address of the page on our site and says “the design on this product reproduces my drawing”. It closes with the two statements from points 5 and 6 in your own words, your typed name as a signature and your contact details. Side-by-side images help, though they are not required.

What slows a notice down

• No page address, or only the homepage address.
• A description of the complaint with no identification of your own work.
• A notice sent on someone else’s behalf without saying you are authorised to act for them.
• A missing good-faith or accuracy statement. We cannot treat a message as a DMCA notice without both.
• A trademark complaint sent as a copyright notice. A brand name or a logo is usually a trademark matter and belongs under the Intellectual Property Policy.

4. What we do when we receive a notice

When a notice arrives, we read it. If yours is incomplete, we write back and tell you which element is missing. Once a notice is complete, we compare the work you identified with the material on our site. If the notice is valid, we remove the material or disable access to it, and we confirm this to you by email.

If the material was posted by a customer, we tell that person it was removed and why, and we may pass on a copy of the notice. Where the law allows, we withhold your contact details when we do so.

If we conclude that the material does not infringe, for example because the two works share a subject but not an expression, we write back and explain our reasoning. You remain free to take the matter further.

5. Counter-notification

If content you posted on the site was removed after a copyright notice and you believe that was a mistake or a misidentification, you may send a counter-notification to the same email address with the subject line “Counter-notification”. It must contain:

1. your physical or electronic signature;
2. identification of the material that was removed, and the page address where it appeared before removal;
3. a statement, under penalty of perjury, that you have a good-faith belief the material was removed because of a mistake or a misidentification;
4. your name, postal address and telephone number;
5. a statement that you consent to the jurisdiction of the federal district court for the district where your address is located, or, if your address is outside the United States, for any judicial district in which Reel Tee may be found, and that you will accept service of process from the person who sent the original notice.

We forward a valid counter-notification to the person who sent the original notice. The material may then be restored as the law provides, unless that person tells us they have filed a court action over it.

6. False or misleading notices

A copyright notice is a legal statement made under penalty of perjury. Under 17 U.S.C. § 512(f), anyone who knowingly makes a material misrepresentation in a notice or a counter-notification may be liable for damages, including costs and attorneys’ fees. Please do not use this process to remove content you simply dislike, to settle a commercial disagreement, or to report a design that shares a theme with yours but does not copy it. If you are unsure whether your rights have been infringed, consider getting legal advice before you write to us.

7. Repeat infringement

If a customer repeatedly posts material that infringes copyright, we remove the material and, where the customer has an account, we may close it.

8. Copyright and personalised orders

Personalised wording is short, and most of it is plain fact: SECOND WIND, Otter Bend, a grandfather’s nickname, “since 1987”. A boat’s name and a lake’s name are not the kind of thing copyright usually protects. Even so, the fields are for his name, his boat and his water, not for quoting someone else’s work. We do not print lines taken from songs, books or films, and we do not print brand names, team names, logos or other people’s trademarks. An order that asks for one of those is cancelled and refunded. The Intellectual Property Policy gives the full rule.

9. If you believe someone has copied our designs

It happens that a customer spots one of our designs on another website or a marketplace listing. If you see one, we would like to know. Email the address of the page to support@reeltee.shop. You do not need to do anything else. An order placed on another website is not an order with us, so our returns policy and our support mailbox cannot help with it.

10. Common questions

Do I need a lawyer to send a notice?

No. The copyright owner can send it personally. The six elements in section 3 are all that is required. A lawyer or an agent may send it for you, provided the notice says they are authorised to act on your behalf.

Do I need to have registered my copyright?

A notice under this process does not have to include a registration number. If your work is registered, include the number, because it makes your ownership easier to confirm.

Can I send a notice if I live outside the United States?

Yes. We accept notices from copyright owners in any country. Write in English if you can, and include the same six elements.

Will the person affected see my details?

Where the material is our own, your details stay with us. Where the material was posted by a customer, that person is told about the notice, and the law may entitle them to a copy. We withhold your contact details where the law allows it.

Is there a designated agent?

Copyright notices for this site are handled through the support mailbox and the postal address given above. Use those two routes and no other.

11. Contact

For copyright matters, email support@reeltee.shop. For anything else, visit Contact Us. See also our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy, which explains how we handle the personal details in a notice.