DMCA

Last updated: November 14, 2026

Grill Tee draws its own designs for backyard cooks: the four cooker ranges, the cook-day lettering, the signboard aprons that carry your joint’s name. We expect the same respect for other people’s creative work that we would want for ours. This page explains how to tell us if you believe something on grilltee.shop copies your copyrighted work, what your notice needs to contain, and what happens after you send it. For trademarks, business names and other non-copyright concerns, see our Intellectual Property Policy.

1. What this page covers

This process covers material that appears on grilltee.shop: product images and mockups, the printed designs shown on aprons, tees, the long sleeve tee, the crewneck, the hoodie, the dad cap, the mugs and the tumbler, the drawings on the homepage (the offset smoker, kettle, pellet cooker and flat-top griddle tiles, the cook-day strip and the hand-painted signboard examples), product descriptions and the text on our information pages. It follows the notice-and-takedown process of the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act (17 U.S.C. § 512) and is meant to work in the same plain way for rights holders in Canada, Australia and New Zealand, where we also sell.

Grill Tee is not a marketplace. There are no third-party sellers, no shop-within-a-shop and no listings uploaded by strangers. That keeps things simple: if a design on our site is the problem, you are dealing directly with the store that put it there.

2. Before you write: a few things that are not copyright

Copyright protects creative expression, such as a drawing, a photograph, a piece of lettering artwork or written text. It does not protect short phrases, common cooking words or ideas on their own. “Low and slow”, “thin blue smoke”, “the stall” and “hot and fast” belong to every cook. A drawing of a kettle on its own is not a copy of somebody else’s drawing of a kettle unless the artwork itself has been copied.

Other concerns sit on a different page. If your worry is a business name, a logo or a brand that you believe a design imitates, that is a trademark matter, and the Intellectual Property Policy explains how to report it. If someone has ordered a personalised apron with a name you feel is yours, that page covers it too. And if you are a customer with a problem about your own order, such as a misprint or a size that does not fit, the Help Center is the better door.

3. How to send a copyright notice

Your written notice must include all of the following:

1. A physical or electronic signature of the copyright owner or of a person authorised to act for them. A typed full name at the end of the email is an electronic signature.
2. Identification of the copyrighted work you believe has been infringed. A link to where your original is published, or a copy attached, helps a great deal.
3. Identification of the material on our site that you believe infringes, with the exact URL of each product or page. “Your smoker shirt” is hard to act on; the product link is not.
4. Your name, postal address, telephone number and email address.
5. A statement that you have a good-faith belief that the use is not authorised by the copyright owner, its agent or the law.
6. A statement 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.

Email the notice to support@grilltee.shop with the subject line “Copyright notice”. Our support is by email only; we have no phone line or chat, so please do not wait for a call. An incomplete notice is not ignored, but we will have to write back for the missing parts before we can act, and that costs you time.

3.1 A worked example

Say you are an illustrator who sells prints of a pellet cooker drawn in a particular style, with your own hopper detail and smoke curl, and you find a tee in our Pellet Cooker range that looks traced from it. A complete notice would link your original (your portfolio page or the print listing), link our product page, explain which parts match, give your contact details, and include the two statements above with your typed name. With that in hand there is nothing left to ask, and we can go straight to reviewing the design.

3.2 If you are acting for someone else

Agents, lawyers and licensing managers are welcome to send notices. Tell us who the rights owner is and confirm that you are authorised to act for them. If you represent a sign painter, a photographer or a type designer, the same six elements apply.

4. What happens after we receive a notice

Support replies within 24 hours on business days, so the first thing you get is a person confirming that your notice arrived and saying whether anything is missing. Then we review it: we compare the work you identified with the material on our page and look at where our design came from. If the notice is valid, we remove or disable access to the material and tell you by email when that is done.

We do not promise a fixed number of days for the review itself, because some cases are a ten-minute side-by-side and others need a closer look at dates and drafts. We will tell you where things stand if it takes longer than you would expect, and you are always welcome to email and ask.

4.1 What removal can mean

• A product image or mockup is taken down and replaced.
• A product page is unpublished while the design is reviewed or redrawn.
• Text on a description or information page is rewritten.

Removing a listing does not affect any customer’s order history or their right to return under our Returns and Exchanges Policy.

4.2 Customer personalisation text

Customers type their own words into three products: the Backyard Joint Signboard Apron, the Pitmaster Name Apron and the Backyard Joint Tee. That text is order information, not content published on the site; we print it on the customer’s item and do not display it on our pages. A joint name or a short title is rarely a copyright question. If you believe a personalised order reproduces your protected work, write to us with the details and we will look at it under this page or the Intellectual Property Policy, whichever fits.

4.3 Two more examples

A photographer finds that a background in one of our mug mockups uses a photo of a smoky backyard that she took and never licensed to anyone. Her notice links her original photo and our mug page. That is an image swap rather than a design question, and the mockup is replaced once the notice checks out.

A type designer believes the lettering on a Kettle and Charcoal tee was traced from a font he sells. He sends the font specimen and points to the letters he thinks match. Lettering cases take a closer look than photos do, so expect a reply that confirms the notice and then a second message with the outcome of the review.

5. Counter-notification

Because no one but Grill Tee publishes material on this site, a counter-notification would normally come from us, or from a designer or photographer whose work we licensed, if we believe a removal was a mistake or a misidentification. A counter-notification must include a signature, identification of the material removed and where it appeared, a statement under penalty of perjury that the person believes it was removed by mistake or misidentification, their name, address and phone number, and consent to the jurisdiction of the appropriate court.

The law describes what follows: a valid counter-notification is passed to the person who sent the original notice, and the material may be restored after 10 to 14 business days unless that person reports that they have filed a court action.

6. False or mistaken notices

Under 17 U.S.C. § 512(f), anyone who knowingly and materially misrepresents that material is infringing, or that it was removed by mistake, may be liable for damages. That is not meant to scare off honest notices. Plenty of genuine concerns turn out to be a coincidence of two people drawing the same flat-top griddle. If you are unsure whether a match is close enough to be infringement, it is worth getting legal advice before you send a formal notice, or simply emailing us first with a question rather than a claim.

7. How we try to prevent problems

Our ranges are built around cookers and cook-day moments rather than borrowed artwork. We keep brand names off designs, titles and copy: you will not find the name of a grill maker, a sauce company or a thermometer brand on a Grill Tee product. We stay away from film and cartoon characters and from parody designs that lean on someone else’s poster or logo. The joint names used as examples across the site, such as “Smoke Hollow BBQ”, “Low & Slow on Elm”, “The Carport Pit” and “Big Mike’s Backyard”, are invented and are not real restaurants, businesses or people.

None of that is a reason to stay quiet if you see a problem. A drawing can come out closer to someone else’s than anyone intended, and we would rather hear about it.

8. Repeat problems

Each valid notice is a reason to look again at where a design came from, not only at the one listing named. Since customers do not upload content to the site, there are no customer accounts to suspend for repeat infringement.

9. What this page does not change

A copyright notice is handled separately from ordinary orders. It does not delay anyone else’s order, and it does not change the store’s fixed terms: orders are made in 1-3 business days, travel 7-14 business days to the US, Canada, Australia or New Zealand, can be changed or cancelled within 24 hours, and can be returned within 60 days of delivery. Those details live on Shipping and Delivery, Cancel or Change an Order and the returns page.

10. Contact

For copyright notices and questions, email support@grilltee.shop with the subject “Copyright notice”. Our business address is Grill Tee, 3349 Roundabout Dr, Middleburg, FL 32068, US, but email reaches us faster and is the route we answer. For general questions see Contact Us, and for the rules that cover use of the site, read the Terms of Service. These terms are governed by the laws of Florida.