Intellectual Property Policy

Last updated: November 14, 2026

This Intellectual Property Policy explains what belongs to Grill Tee on grilltee.shop, what you are welcome to do with it, how we try to stay clear of other people’s names, marks and artwork, and how to raise a concern if you think we got that wrong. It also covers the one part of the store where the words are yours: the personalised aprons and tee that carry your joint name, your town or your name. Copyright notices have their own step-by-step process on our DMCA page.

1. What belongs to Grill Tee

Everything you see on the site was put together for this store. That includes the Grill Tee name and logo; the four drawn cookers on the homepage (offset smoker, kettle, pellet cooker and flat-top griddle) and the tiles they sit on; the cook-day strip that walks through fire, smoke, wrap, rest and slice; the hand-painted signboard examples in the “name your backyard joint” section; the printed designs on our aprons, tees, long sleeve tee, crewneck sweatshirt, pullover hoodie, dad cap, mugs, tumbler, kids apron and youth tee; the product photographs and mockups; product descriptions; the text of our information pages; and the layout of the site itself. This material is owned by Grill Tee or used under licence and is protected by copyright, trademark and related laws.

2. What you may do

• Browse, read and print pages for your own use, for example printing the Size Guide to measure a favourite tee before ordering a 4XL.
• Share links to our products and pages by message, email or social post. Sending your brother the link to the Offset and Stick Burner range so he can drop a hint before his birthday is exactly what links are for.
• Post photos of a Grill Tee item you own, being worn at your own cooker. It is yours once it arrives.
• Quote a short line from a page with a link back to it.

3. What you may not do

• Copy, reproduce or resell our designs, product photos or descriptions, on a marketplace, in another online store or on printed goods.
• Take a design from our site to a local print shop to have it made up, or upload it to a print-on-demand service.
• Use the Grill Tee name or logo, or something confusingly close, in a way that suggests you are us or that we work with you.
• Scrape or bulk-download the site with automated tools, other than normal search engine indexing.
• Build new designs from ours, for example redrawing our kettle tile with a different slogan, without written permission.

If you are unsure whether something you have in mind is fine, ask first at support@grilltee.shop. A short email before is easier for both of us than a takedown request after.

4. How we stay clear of other people’s rights

Backyard cooking is full of brands, and it would be easy to lean on them. We do not. Our ranges are named after the kind of cooker, not the maker, which is why the categories read Offset and Stick Burner, Kettle and Charcoal, Pellet Cooker and Flat-Top Griddle. These are the habits we hold to:

• No brand names. You will not find the name of a grill maker, a griddle maker, a cooler or drinkware company, a thermometer brand or a sauce and rub company in our titles, designs or copy. Where a cook would name a brand, we say “cooker”, “pitmaster” or “pit crew”.
• No sanctioning bodies or contest marks. We do not use the names or badges of barbecue competition organisations, and we make no claims about contests or titles.
• No characters and no poster parodies. No film or cartoon characters, and no designs that borrow a famous film poster or spy-film styling with a grilling pun on top.
• No real businesses as examples. The joint names shown on the site, “Smoke Hollow BBQ”, “Low & Slow on Elm”, “The Carport Pit” and “Big Mike’s Backyard”, are invented. They are not real restaurants or people.
• No status claims. We do not describe a design as authentic to any barbecue region or as used by champions, because those claims belong to other people.

Common cook-day words such as low and slow, bark, the stall, the wrap, burnt ends, point and flat are part of everyone’s vocabulary. We use them because they are how cooks talk, not to suggest any connection with anyone.

5. Your personalisation text

Three products print your words: the Backyard Joint Signboard Apron (joint name up to 18 characters in capitals, optional town up to 18 characters, optional “Since” year), the Pitmaster Name Apron (name up to 16 characters in capitals, a title chosen from Pitmaster, Fire Tender, Sauce Boss, Head Cook or Taste Tester, optional “Since” year) and the Backyard Joint Tee (joint name, town and “Since” year). The live preview on the product page shows your lines over the product picture, and the same text appears in your cart, at checkout and in your order email. We print exactly what is typed. No proof is sent before production, so what you read back at checkout is what goes on the item.

5.1 Whose words they are

The text you type stays yours. We use it only to make your order and do not publish it, sell it or show it as an example. By ordering, you confirm that you are allowed to use the words you typed. For almost everyone that question never comes up: a backyard name like “THE CARPORT PIT”, a first name, a town and a year are not anybody else’s property.

5.2 Where to take care

The awkward cases are names that belong to a real business. If your joint name is the same as a restaurant down the road, or the trade name of a sauce you love, that name may be someone else’s trademark. Please do not type a registered brand, a company logo phrase or a famous person’s name unless it is yours to use. If you own a real food business and want its name on aprons for yourself, that is your own name and you are welcome to use it.

The “Since” year is the same: it is your own text, describing your own cooking. It says when you lit your first fire, not anything about Grill Tee, which shows no founding year of its own.

5.3 When the name runs long

Sometimes the issue is not rights but room. “SMOKE HOLLOW BARBECUE COMPANY” is 29 characters and the signboard joint line takes 18, so it does not fit. “SMOKE HOLLOW BBQ” does. The preview shows you this before you add to cart, and if you spot a mistake after ordering, email within 24 hours and we can change the text. The Cancel or Change an Order page explains how.

5.4 Gifts and other people’s names

Most personalised orders are gifts, and most gifts carry somebody else’s name. A daughter types her father’s first name on a Pitmaster Name Apron and picks Fire Tender because that is what he has been since she was small. That is a family name, used for the person it belongs to, and it raises no rights question at all. The care in section 5.2 is about famous people and businesses, not about putting Dad’s name on Dad’s apron.

The same goes for a crew. If five friends who cook together every Labor Day want their joint’s name on five Backyard Joint Tees, the name is theirs. Five tees in five different sizes need no minimum and carry no special terms.

6. Our trademarks and other names

Grill Tee and our logo are our trademarks. Any other name or mark that appears on the site, for example in a customer’s message or a review elsewhere, belongs to its owner, and its appearance does not mean that owner endorses us or that we are connected with them.

7. How to report an intellectual property concern

If you believe a Grill Tee product or page uses your trademark, trade dress, design or likeness without permission, email support@grilltee.shop with the subject “IP concern” and include:

1. Your name and contact details, and how you relate to the rights owner (owner, employee, lawyer, agent).
2. The right concerned: a trademark with its registration number and country if it has one, a description of a design, or the person whose name or likeness is used.
3. The URL of each product or page you are concerned about.
4. A short explanation of why you believe it infringes, and a statement that the information you have given is accurate.

For a copyright claim about artwork, photos or text, please follow the six-element notice on the DMCA page instead, because the law sets out what that notice must contain.

8. What happens next

A person replies within 24 hours on business days to confirm that your report arrived and to ask for anything missing. We then review the product or page against the right you described. If the concern is valid, we remove or change the product, image or text and tell you by email. If we need more information to decide, we ask rather than guess. We do not set a fixed number of days for the review, because a straightforward name match is quicker to settle than a question about a design’s overall look, but you can ask for an update at any time.

8.1 An example

A small food truck owner in Ohio sees one of our sample signboard names and thinks it matches his truck’s name. He emails a link to his business page and the product. We look, and if the sample name is too close to his real business, we swap it out on the site for a different invented name. The invented names exist so that nobody’s real joint ends up as our advertising.

9. Ideas and feedback

Cooks send good ideas: a range for ceramic cookers, a title that is missing from the Pitmaster Name Apron list, a design for the person who only does the sides. We read every one. If you send an idea, we may use it without payment, but we will never publish your name, your email or your personal details with it without your permission.

10. Permission requests and contact

To ask permission to use our content, for example a cooker drawing for a club newsletter, email support@grilltee.shop and tell us what you want to use and where. Grill Tee is at 3349 Roundabout Dr, Middleburg, FL 32068, US, and works by email only. For the rules that cover use of the site, see the Terms of Service, which are governed by Florida law, and for everything else visit Contact Us.