I've looked into design copyright issues for a previous business and sell Tshirts passively through Print-On-Demand shops like RedBubble, so although I'm not a lawyer, here's what I've found:
- If the author keeps 'ownership', then the author owns the intellectual property and would be the one to get them copyrighted if needed. Your business would not own the copyright, only an exclusive license to use the designs. If you want to own the copyright, it should be in your contract (that the designer signs over all rights to the artwork. They can still put it in their portfolio of work as the creator, they just wouldn't be the owner of the intellectual property anymore, and since your current deal is that you have an exclusive right to use the design, they couldn't sell it anyway, so I'm not sure why they want to keep it. For-hire work by designers often includes signing all rights to the work over to the buyer).
- Pursuing actual legal copyright filing is expensive and usually pointless unless you're a big company. People will rip off your designs if they become popular/successful. It's a fact of our digital age, and there's no way to stop them besides finding each offense and sending them cease-and-desist letters (and then pursuing legal action if they don't desist). You can do this regardless of whether you have filed for an "official" copyright, since stealing intellectual property is illegal (in the US anyway) regardless of whether there is a copyright filing (you just have to prove date of creation/use). Having the official legal copyright filing simply means that you can go after them for damages, which unless you have deep pockets for lawyers, it won't make financial sense to do for every random business who steals your designs. If someone big (like a big clothing company) steals your design and you don't have a legal copyright filing yet, your best bet is to take your case to social media.
- I did have my most popular design on RedBubble stolen by another person on the site. I let RedBubble know that I'd posted it first and that the other person clearly stole my design, and they took the other posting down. I've been on the other side too where I accidentally ran afoul of (honestly pretty specious) claims to copyright (I had a cat saying "It's time for second breakfast!" and was sent a cease and desist (through RedBubble) from Warner Bros because of The Hobbit movie, which ... really?? Second breakfast was a thing before Tolkein. But I didn't fight it, because Warner Bros has lawyers. Shrug.). Redbubble (or w/e POD site, if you're using one) is the one who sends the letter and yanks your design, and you can pursue arbitration/further action if you want to. If you're selling through your own site, you'd have to do that legwork yourself, but in the end ... for Tshirt businesses, marketing matters more than design, unfortunately.
- If you want to make it harder for people to steal your designs, make sure not to put high-resolution images on your site, or if you do, have a watermark on it. Art with shading is harder to steal than simple text and vector art, but ultimately there's nothing you can do to stop someone else from recreating your design. All you can do is pursue them afterwards. Since they won't bother to copy you unless you become successful, as a new business you should put most of your energy into marketing, not copyrights. Once a design starts selling well, that's when you'd want to copyright it. I've found that many designs I thought would be popular often weren't, and some designs I'd never expect to be popular have been some of my best sellers. So copyrighting them all before they actually sell well would be, as I said, expensive and pointless. My advice: after three months of good sales, that's when you should think about filing a copyright.
Anyway, hope that helps!! Good luck :)
