QKO

Probably to discourage the manufacturer from selling it into unauthorized situations. Say I license an image to you for making fabrics, with the express condition that you not sell it to anyone that is intending on manufacturing items made from it. I also require you to put a "not for manufacture" type warning on the selvedge.

You manufacture it, then contrary to the agreement, sell a thousand bolts to a sweat shop, who then makes a million articles of clothing bearing my licensed image and looking like authorized products. They show up at Wal-mart and it's clearly an unauthorized product pretending to be an authorized, licensed product.

I get the government to go in and raid the sweatshop. With the warning on the selvedge, I have a lot better chance at proving that you, the manufacturer, or one of your authorized distributors broke the terms of the agreement.

In that case, it would in fact have legal standing. However if you, the manufacturer sell it to a retailer, which is authorized under our agreement, I lose control at that point of anything that's done with the product bearing my copyrighted or licensed images.

You're right, it has no legal standing in the retail user context, but it may very well have legal standing in the wholesale/manufacturing context.

I agree, it would be a lot smarter for them to clarify this rather than to leave it up in the air.

But it's put on there either by dictate from the designer, or by the manufacturer trying to cover their own behinds. Just more living proof that there are too many lawyers... :-)