How to get license rights for copyrighted images/themes?

How do I go about licensing material for use on t-shirts? For example, pac-man on a shirt. What is a typical licensing arrangement fee structure? If the company you are looking to license an image from does not have an obvious policy in place is there a standard agreement you can draft up, or should you get a lawyer to draft one for you?

So I can get you started and hopefully others can take you the rest of the way. You can go to the trademark office at:

http://tess2.uspto.gov/bin/gate.exe?f=tess&state=4008:c8o8ct.1.1

 

and select "New User Form" to a search for the trademark. For example, "pac-man" returns (results pruned for brevity)

Word Mark PAC-MAN

Filing Date April 25, 2005

Owner (REGISTRANT) NAMCO LTD. CORPORATION JAPAN 2-1-21 YAGUCHI, 

 OTA-KU TOKYO JAPAN 146

Attorney of Record David L. Anderson

Live/Dead Indicator LIVE

From this you can find out who owns the trademark and you should be able to find a licensing person there. I don't think there is any form of standard licensing agreement for trademarks though and you'll have to negotiate with each party you want to license something for and the licensing will probably be based on what you want to use the mark for.

Pretty much all companies with strong brands have a licensing department. I would look at your target companies and then Google their licensing/legal department.