
Designer gets accused of stealing his own work and billed $18,000 - minus
http://www.jonengle.com/2009/04/accused/
======
huhtenberg
Back in 2002 Stockart was actively soliciting copyright infringement leads:

    
    
      ...
      All we need is for you to give us enough information 
      to locate the communication which has the illustration(s)
      used out of copyright, and we will take it from there. 
      In return, we will send you 10% of ANY settlement moneys
      we recover. This could amount to thousands of dollars for
      you AND the illustrators, by simply doing what is right!
    

<http://whatdoiknow.org/archives/000097.shtml>

Also, Jon (the designer) said that there was at least one other designer that
had gave into their extortion scheme, and that he would've given in too if not
for the community support. To me this puts the whole situation in a completely
different light. It makes it seem as if the copyright "enforcement" is a part
of StockArts business plan.

------
patio11
I think a certain law firm is going to get a very expensive lesson in the
meaning of "tortious interference". God, this is such a canonical example of
it you might as well print it in the freaking dictionary next to the
definition.

~~~
mechanical_fish
The definition:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tortious_interference>

That should save everyone who reads this a few clicks.

------
ryan-allen
This is terrible, the plaintiff's lawyer contacting his clients to inform that
work he has done, is allegedly infringing copyright...

I hope he counter-sues and takes their whole law firm down, what a crock.

~~~
Brushfire
I'm with you. The problem with this is the separation... He could likely be
tied up in litigation over this for YEARS, all while his business is now
losing revenue. Hopefully he has some rich relatives he can call on to
bankroll his legal issues.

Thats the downside of being in this position, is that you can get ruined
before you even finish the first legal battle.

------
mechanical_fish
So the big question is: I've invented a logo. Where do I submit it, along with
my identifying information, in order to get a certification (backed up by
something that will hold up in court, like a notary's signature) that I
uploaded and claimed it on a specific date?

One obvious answer is "The US Copyright Office":

<http://www.copyright.gov/eco/index.html>

But that's $35 per registration. Seems like one of those online entrepreneurs
I keep hearing about might be able to offer a cheaper service, via the web, to
every designer in the world.

Of course, a lawyer may tell me that this is useless. Or it might be that the
correct answer is "Flickr", and to do more is overkill.

~~~
thinkcomp
Logos are not copyrightable. You would trademark a logo.

~~~
mbrubeck
A name is just a trademark, but a logo is a work of art, and may be covered by
both trademark and copyright law. For example, the Debian/Firefox controversy
hinged on the non-free _copyright_ license governing the Firefox logo artwork:
<http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=354622>

~~~
thinkcomp
Despite what some random developer says on a bug report, the Firefox logo
artwork is actually governed by the Mozilla trademark policy.

<http://www.mozilla.org/foundation/trademarks/policy.html>

Furthermore, the implication that words are trademarks and logos are non-
trademarkable works of art is misleading. Names and phrases registered as
trademarks are called word marks, and graphical logos are considered design
marks. Both are trademarks (or servicemarks if you're offering a service).

This is a pretty useless discussion in any event. If you're wondering how to
protect your logo, you should really ask a lawyer. All I'm saying is that your
lawyer will tell you that you should trademark your logo, and that
copyrighting it would be a complete waste of your time.

------
themanual
Site is down now.

Try accessing the page from Google cache.
[http://74.125.77.132/search?q=cache:http://www.jonengle.com/...](http://74.125.77.132/search?q=cache:http://www.jonengle.com/2009/04/accused/)

------
dkokelley
If the images are infact his then he has an easy counter-suit for copyright
infringement. If StockArt is found to have sold images that were stolen then
they owe the original artist the value of what they've sold the art for.

Come to think of it, this is pretty risky for StockArt. They are betting quite
a lot that they win. If they don't win, they lose - big time. They may end up
wishing they had never brought it up to Jon.

~~~
flatline
The problem with this is the exorbitant costs in time and money to bring a
suit for something like this. StockArt can afford to litigate (from the sound
if it, they do this repeatedly and can just shell out to a lawfirm), this
designer probably cannot. There's a kernel of truth to the saying that the
only ones who profit from lawsuits are the lawyers.

------
gscott
In this case I would suggest creating a "sucks" website for the company in
question to shame them. It has been upheld by the court system as a 100% legal
thing to do... (for examples see paypalsucks.com and riaasucks.com)

~~~
huhtenberg
This is a very bad advice for a number of reasons.

As others pointed out any sort of quirky publicity stunts will only complicate
matters for the designer should the case (in whatever form) end up in court.

------
ynniv
There is a group of state-wide organizations called the Volunteer Lawyers for
the Arts that help artists with issues like these. Unfortunately they do not
have a New Mexico chapter, but there is a Colorado chapter if Jon wanted to
counter sue in StockArt's home state. [
<http://www.vlany.org/resources/vladirectory.php> ]

------
voidpointer
There are a few interesting links to the artwork that is obviously showing up
in other designer's work on StockArt.com and Jon Engle's work at reddit:
[http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/8ac0q/designer_g...](http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/8ac0q/designer_gets_accused_of_stealing_his_own_work/c08p5i7)

It's not clear who came up with what first. However, the other designers
submissions seem to be consistent with their general style while there is not
so much consistency in Jon's style. There are no upload dates though on the
StockArt.com stuff. This might be fishy...

~~~
voidpointer
There is a bit more background on "the other side" of this story with some
more examples: [http://www.thelogofactory.com/logo_blog/index.php/stock-
logo...](http://www.thelogofactory.com/logo_blog/index.php/stock-logos-
copyright-twitter/)

------
cnlwsu
seems like the guy created a website for donating to the legal funds (also in
comment thread on jonengle.com)
[http://www.fundable.com/groupactions/groupaction.2009-04-06....](http://www.fundable.com/groupactions/groupaction.2009-04-06.6402295564)

------
tomsaffell
This does seem terrible. Can anyone suggest a way that we can help this guy?
(assuming this can be validated - though I'm not suggesting it's not true)

~~~
patio11
_Do nothing_. He doesn't need an Internet cheering section. He needs a lawyer,
and an extraordinarily straightforward civil suit.

Anything a net groundswell could possibly accomplish is only going to
complicate the very simple "They falsely alleged copyright over my works. They
ignored my reasonable attempts to correct their misunderstanding. They then
contacted my clients and called me a thief. I have suffered demonstrable
damage to my business and professional reputation as a result. This behavior
is tortious." narrative his lawyer will be telling the court.

~~~
feverishaaron
That, and be wary of using any work from that stock art website, as their may
be... uh... "usage rights complications".

------
Adam503
Looks like throwing bill collectors and lawyers at people that don't owe
money, or fully paid their bills is the big growth industry right now.

Between this report, and all the reports I've seen of AFNI try to collect (and
harrassing if they refuse to pay) paid Verizon accounts...

<http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/3/31/6553/40643>

<http://www.ripoffreport.com/reports/0/258/RipOff0258146.htm>

It appears the way Corporate America's new growth industry is demanding people
pay bills that are already paid, or never owed in the first place, and
harrassing them if they refuse.

------
zepolen
This sort of mirrors my question about the legality of a TOS on the internet:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=548002>

With no canonical examples of 'who was first', and bytes being bytes and
therefore editable (ie. timestamps on files count for nothing whatsoever),
it's impossible without some sort of trusted 3rd party in which to vouch for
this guys story.

Even if the author has paper sketches, they in turn mean nothing as there is
no proof as to /when/ they were created.

~~~
jcl
True, ownership of the preliminary work can be faked. However, without
intimate knowledge of file formats and graphics algorithms it would be
challenging to, for example, come up with an Illustrator vector file that
rasterizes byte-for-byte to the scaled-down logo images copied from his
portfolio. (assuming the thieves copied the graphics directly and didn't think
to make their own vector file first...)

It may even be enough for him to have a credible high-res, layer-separated
Photoshop file; someone who does not have the skills to produce their own
original artwork probably also lacks the skills to convincingly fake a high-
res version of someone else's artwork.

(Not sure if this has held in court, but I'd bet it has come up before.)

------
RiderOfGiraffes
Currently I'm getting this:

    
    
      Service Temporarily Unavailable
    
      The server is temporarily unable to service your request
      due to maintenance downtime or capacity problems. Please
      try again later.
    
      Additionally, a 503 Service Temporarily Unavailable error
      was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to
      handle the request.
    

I wonder if that's because a law firm has complained about the complaint, or
if this is proving popular.

~~~
jupiter
No downtime or capacity problems at Google:

[http://209.85.129.132/search?q=cache:4xeUCXpV_BcJ:www.joneng...](http://209.85.129.132/search?q=cache:4xeUCXpV_BcJ:www.jonengle.com/2009/04/accused/+jonengle.com&cd=2&hl=de&ct=clnk&gl=de)

