I’ll preface this by saying that I have no personal interest in any of the countless unlicensed sports merch vendors in Pittsburgh. The Great Moments feature does just what it implies…features the highs and lows of generic Pittsburgh sports shirts, hats, blankets and other merchandise. I’ve had a number of online vendors send me links to their shoppes, and I’ll feature a shirt or two every now and then. This is just my area to voice my opinion on if I’d buy, wear or own these specific unlicensed pieces.
So we’ve come to the inevitable point where there’s now a dispute over an unlicensed design. An anonymous reader (we’ll call him Hellboy) sends over the picture up top, which is from the Pittsburgh City Paper. Hellboy also sent the other pics in this post, and mentions that he noticed a design that was featured in the CP from somewhere else. He remembered the online store People’s Cartel, and that the PC people had a similar design a long time ago (which was worn onstage in Pittsburgh by Lil Wayne). Now that Believe Merch had the same design and was getting pub in the City Paper, he wanted to make sure there were no design thieves out there.
My background here is that I mentioned the People’s Cartel shirt and that specific Lil Wayne video in which he’s wearing this shirt. That’s from last summer, so I know that design has been around for a bit. I’m not well-versed on Believe Merch or Peoples Cartel either, so I can’t comment on how long they’ve each had this particular design.
I guess the only way to settle it would be to see who had the license first. Oh wait… How do unlicensed vendors go about this then?
If you have any unlicensed Pittsburgh sports gear, or awesome generic sports gear from any team, send them to me and I’ll post them.
(thanks to Cotter for the banner pic)
