Intellectual Property Policy
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This Intellectual Property Policy explains who owns the designs, photos and words on threadwell.shop, what you may and may not do with them, how Thread Well respects other people’s rights when it embroiders your order, and how to tell us about a trademark, design or other intellectual property concern. Embroidery is a craft built on letters and motifs, and both can belong to someone: a university owns its crest, a sports league owns its team marks, an author’s publisher owns a cover illustration. We keep our range to original designs and to words our customers are entitled to use. For copyright notices specifically, please use our DMCA page.
In brief
- The Thread Well name, the needle-and-TW logo, our embroidery designs, product images and site text belong to Thread Well or its licensors.
- You are welcome to share links to our pages; please do not copy our designs, photos or descriptions.
- We do not stitch third-party logos, school crests, team marks, licensed characters or publisher artwork.
- Text you put in Order notes must be yours to use — names, initials, dates and your own words are always fine.
- Report a concern to support@threadwell.shop; we reply within 24 hours on business days.
1. What belongs to Thread Well
Everything you see on threadwell.shop that we created — the Thread Well name and wordmark, the logo showing a needle threaded through a TW monogram, our embroidery designs (for example the stacked-books spine motif, the garden-club wildflower bunch, the notebook-paper classroom label, the running-stitch heart, the one-line mountain trail), the product images and illustrations, product and category descriptions, help pages, page layout and code — is owned by Thread Well or used under licence. It is protected by copyright, trademark and other intellectual property laws.
Owning a design does not mean anyone owns the letters of the alphabet or the idea of a monogram. Classic forms such as a three-letter serif monogram, a circle monogram or varsity arch lettering are traditional styles anyone may use. What we protect is our particular artwork, our photographs and our writing.
2. What you are welcome to do
- Browse, view and print pages for your own personal, non-commercial use — for example printing the Size Guide to measure a sweatshirt at home.
- Share links to our product pages by message, email or on social media, including the product image that appears automatically in a link preview.
- Post photos of a Thread Well piece you bought and are wearing.
- Quote a short extract of our text with a link back to the page it came from.
3. What we ask you not to do
- Copy, resell or republish our product photos, embroidery designs or descriptions, including on marketplaces, print-on-demand platforms or other shops.
- Digitise our designs into embroidery files, or create products or derivative works from them, without our written permission.
- Use the Thread Well name, logo or anything confusingly similar in a way that suggests a connection with us.
- Scrape or bulk-download the site with automated tools, except normal search engine indexing.
4. Our trademarks and other people’s marks
Thread Well and our logo are our trademarks. Other names or marks that might appear on the site, for example in a customer question we quote or in a carrier’s tracking notice, belong to their owners. Their appearance does not mean they endorse us or that we are connected to them.
5. What we will and will not stitch
Because most Thread Well pieces carry words chosen by our customers, this section matters as much as the rest of the policy. We are happy to embroider personal text, and we decline text and artwork that belong to someone else.
| Request | Can we stitch it? | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Initials “J S M” in a serif monogram | Yes | Your own initials in a traditional style |
| “Mrs. Bennett” with 2026 on the cuff | Yes | A personal name and date |
| Children’s names NOAH, ELLA, MAX down a sleeve | Yes | Family names chosen by the purchaser |
| “book club” replaced by your own club’s name | Yes | Your group’s own name, as long as it is not someone else’s registered brand |
| A university crest or a school mascot | No | School crests, mascots and athletic marks are owned by the institution |
| A professional or college team name or logo | No | Team names and logos are trademarks of the team or league |
| A cartoon or film character | No | Licensed characters belong to their studios and licensors |
| A book’s cover art or a publisher’s logo | No | Cover illustrations and publisher marks belong to the publisher or artist |
| A short, generic phrase such as “just one more chapter” | Usually yes | Short common phrases are generally free to use; we may check if a phrase is a known brand slogan |
| A café or brand logo for a “coffee club” design | No | Business logos belong to their owners |
If a note in your order asks for something we cannot stitch, we email you before production starts. You can change the text, or cancel and receive a full refund. Our Terms of Service explain this in section 3.
Your responsibility for Order notes text
When you type text into the Order notes box at checkout, you confirm that you have the right to use it on a garment and that it does not infringe anyone else’s trademark, copyright or other rights. Names of people in your family, your friends, your class or your pets are personal details, not intellectual property, and are always welcome. If you are unsure about a phrase — a line from a song or a book, a slogan you saw elsewhere — ask us before ordering at support@threadwell.shop.
School and team spirit without the official marks
Many customers want a sweatshirt for a senior year, a class, a sports season or a hometown. You can get that feeling without anyone’s protected marks. Choose a garment colour close to your colours — Navy, Maroon, Forest Green or Charcoal cover most school palettes — and put your own words in the note: a surname in varsity arch letters, a class year under “senior”, a room number on the classroom-crew label, or the name of your town. What we leave out is the crest, the mascot drawing, the official athletic wordmark and the team logo. That keeps your piece personal and keeps us on the right side of the people who own those marks.
Readers, fans and quotations
Bookish embroidery is one of our favourite collections, and it stays original on purpose. We stitch our own motifs — a stack of spines, an open book, a library-card stamp — and short everyday phrases. We do not reproduce a book’s cover art, a publisher’s colophon, a series logo or an illustration from inside a book. Quoting a long passage from a novel, poem or song lyric may also be protected by copyright; if you would like a line of text that comes from a published work, tell us the source in your note or email us first, and we will let you know whether we can stitch it. A character’s name on its own, or a phrase like “one more chapter”, is generally fine; a character’s likeness is not.
6. How our own designs are made
Thread Well designs are drawn for embroidery as original line motifs and lettering arrangements. We do not trace other sellers’ artwork, and we do not sell designs that imitate a recognisable brand. If we learn that one of our designs is too close to someone else’s protected work, we review it and remove or change it.
7. How to report an intellectual property concern
If you believe a product or page on threadwell.shop infringes your trademark, design or other rights, email support@threadwell.shop with the subject line “IP concern” and include:
- Your name and contact details, and your relationship to the rights owner (owner, employee, legal representative).
- The right you believe is infringed — for example a trademark registration number and country, or a description of the design with a link to where it was first published.
- The URL of each product or page on threadwell.shop that concerns you.
- A short explanation of why you believe it infringes.
- A statement that the information in your report is accurate and that you are the rights owner or authorised to act for them.
For copyright in photographs, illustrations or text, please follow the notice process on our DMCA page, which lists the elements the law requires.
8. What happens after you report
| Step | What we do |
|---|---|
| Acknowledgement | We reply within 24 hours on business days to confirm we have your report |
| Review | We compare the product or page with the right you describe and may ask you for more information |
| Action | If the concern is valid, we remove or change the product or content and tell you what we did |
| Disagreement | If we believe there is no infringement, we explain why and you remain free to pursue other remedies |
We do not ask you to pay anything, and we do not share your report with customers beyond what is needed to resolve it. If an order containing the disputed text or design has already been placed but not yet stitched, we pause it and contact the customer; if it has already shipped, we do not repeat the design in future orders while the concern is being reviewed.
9. Customer photos and content
If you email us a photo — for example a picture of handwriting you would like copied as a name — you confirm that you took it or have permission to share it. We use it only for your order and delete it 30 days after delivery, as described in our Privacy Policy. We do not publish customer photos without permission.
10. Ideas and suggestions
Customers sometimes suggest a new design: a bird we have not stitched yet, a different hobby, a holiday we have missed. We are grateful for ideas. If you send one, we may use it freely without payment, but we will never publish your name or personal information with it unless you agree.
11. Questions customers ask
Can I order a monogram in the style of a designer brand’s logo?
We stitch monograms in our own serif, script, circle and varsity styles. We do not copy a fashion house’s interlocking-letter logo or any monogram that is used as a brand mark, even with your own initials.
Can I send you a design to embroider?
Thread Well sells its own designs with your personal text. We do not take custom artwork uploads, so please choose a design from the shop and add your words in Order notes.
Someone is selling a copy of a Thread Well design. What should I do?
Thank you for telling us. Email the link to support@threadwell.shop and we will look into it.
12. Permission requests and contact
To ask permission to use our content — for example a blogger who would like to show one of our product images in a gift guide — or for any question about this policy, email support@threadwell.shop or write to Thread Well, 7660 W Windrush Lane, Franklin, WI 53132, US. See also our Terms of Service and Contact Us.