Copyright Case Studies

Copyright Case Studies

Hot off the Press, from this months Computer Arts Magazine

The Copycat Creative.

Freelance artiste Sally Swannell has been thriving in the greeting cards and stationery sector for the past five years. One day, whilst walking down her local high street she came across what looked like a copy of one of her illustrations on a greeting card and calendar.
“The whole design had been copied with a few ‘subtle’ changes,” says Swannell. As a member of the association of Illustrators, she sent them her original design and the ‘copy’: “I felt it was too close to my original I had to do something about it.” Her query is currently being assessed by the AOL’s ethical advisors, and she awaits advice on how – or if – to proceed.
Swannell has found the experience to be utterly deflating. “This isn’t just a nine-to-five-job – I put my heart and soul into it. I love what I do, but all the same I earn my fees. When you’ve spent a lot of time on a piece, its galling to se a badly executed copy somebody has thrown together off the back of your original.”
“I’ve no respect for an artist or designer who copies another’s work. We’re all under commercial pressure. I’ve had requests to ‘Do something the same as that’, but I’ve never gone down that road. I feel it’s totally wrong.”

Its one thing for an illustrator to stumble across work bearing a startling resemblance to their work, but what happens when two pieces of virtually identical corporate branding belongs to a government agency and one of the world’s largest software houses?
This was the situation facing the Scottish Arts Council (SAC) and Quark, when the latter unveiled its new corporate identity in 2005. Quark’s hand drawn upper-case ‘Q’ was identical in all but colour to the SAC lower-case ‘a’, which was also hand drawn. At the time, the SAC put out the following statement: “The similarities of the design of Quark’s new logo and ours are indeed uncanny.” For its part, Quark said: “We engaged in extensive checks to discover any similar existing logos. We evidently didn’t find them all.”
The SAC logo was designed by Glasgow-based Graven Images, founded by on of Scotland’s leading graphic designers, Janice Kirkpatrick. How did she feel when the Quark logo was unveiled? Indignant? Angry? Deflated?
“I found it amusing.” She reveals.
There was a big hoo-hah in the press at the time but there was never any accusation of theft.” She adds; “In our business, we are very process-driven; we don’t just pluck things out of the air. I think its very diffe4erent from the fashion industry, where there are huge issues of counterfeiting. Everything is grounded in research. I never thought it was a rip off idea. Quark is a reputable organisation and it of all organisations would not do something that was illegal.”
Quark binned its controversial new logo, unveiling a radically different version in March 2006 – but not for plagiarism reasons, Kirkpatrick explains: “It was an issue of legal ownership, and I don’t think there was any conflict.”

Sitting back and doing nothing is not an option for many designers who have had their work cribbed – certainly not a certain Australian fashion designer who’s engaged in a global one-man campaign to battle plagiarism in the design industry. You Thought We Wouldn’t Notice is an open blog site dedicated to identifying work that seems too similar to an existing creation to be entirely coincidental. Fields covered include design, art, animation, retail, advertising, fashion and even graffiti.
The site’s founder – who wishes to be known simply as Rone “(The site has pissed a lot of people off, because they have been caught out”) – set it up after he and his friends saw their street art, pop up in places they never expected.
Melbourne–based Rone remembers: “One time, my art was sent to me by a fashion website in an e mail ready for all their subscribers to download and use. People using it for commercial gain didn’t feel right.
The site, he says, is designed to keep copycats on their toes and enables artists who’ve been copied to voice their side of the story and gain support from colleagues and peers.
It now attracts IP lawyers from Europe and the US, who contribute blogs outlining creative rights in various areas of different countries. The aim, explains Rone, is too attract IP lawyers from other countries to help out in delineating rights, in exchange for links from the site.
“I’d like the site to become a strong deterrent to plagiarism.” He says.
“There’s really no excuse for copying someone else’s work – especially corporations with budgets bigger than an artist’s lifetime wages.

Copied in whole from: Computer Arts January 2008 magazine (Pages 36-37)

The Blog site for: You Thought We Wouldn’t Notice
http://youthoughtwewouldntnotice/blog3/

I found this to be a poor messy site even if its concept and ideas are good…good luck navigating it