Designer gets accused of stealing his own work and billed $18,000 | Hacker News Reader

Designer gets accused of stealing his own work and billed $18,000

jonengle.com

206 pointsminus45 comments

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.

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.

The definition:

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

That should save everyone who reads this a few clicks.

Yeah, in my totally unprofessional opinion, if he can prove those are his originally there's a pretty compelling countersuit there. This sort of thing is why we have those.

based on the way the guy typed, I'd bet he'd let them get away with it, whenever they email him saying that they decided that he is right

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.

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.

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.

Just upload it to flickr, they should store the uploaded date.

I imagine it would be his clients who copyright their logos, not him. It's a rare day that the designer has any claim of ownership over a logo s/he does on contract.

If he has a work for hire relationship with his clients (pretty common for logo work), it is up to them to submit the logo for copyright, unless he chooses to submit it on their behalf as part of his services.

The good news is that a single registration fee can cover an entire collection of unpublished works, as long as they are by the same author: http://www.copyright.gov/eco/faq.html#eCO_2.3

Logos are not copyrightable. You would trademark a logo.

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

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.

You would only trademark a logo if you plan on associating it with your company and you don't want any other company to use the same or similar artwork in their identifying artwork.

You could trademark it and then license the trademark to companies that you want to allow to use it. This is pretty common. Some reasons I can think of for this kind of arrangement:

* Parent companies licensing their trademarks to subsidiaries.

* Unrelated companies using similar names who enter into an arrangement where one owns the trademark and the other licenses it. E.g. Tyco International/Tyco Toys, ITT Corp/ITT Tech, Apple Inc/Apple Corps (after Feb 2007).

* Certification, compatibility, or similar logos can be trademarked and licensed to authorized users so the owner can protect against the logo being used in an unauthorized or misleading fashion. E.g. UL Listed logo, Orthodox Union kosher symbol, Windows compatibility stickers.

* Franchising and similar situations. E.g. car dealers, fast-food restaurants, co-ops like IGA and Ace Hardware.

* Avoiding legal hassles that might ensue if the name/logo were not trademarked. E.g. Linux.

Images are copyrightable. It would never make sense to trademark an image because if you can put the image in a fixed medium a) it is free and b) it is protected much longer.

Copyright only lasts for a certain number of years (unless you're one of the people who thinks the government is going to extend copyright terms forever so Micky Mouse never falls into the PD...) whereas trademarks last forever if you can enforce them.

Logos are copyrightable, a trademark is stronger -- But of course, you can copyright a logo it's just an image after all and those are very easily copyrightable.

To be more precise, some logos are not copyrightable. From http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ1.pdf:

"Several categories of material are generally not eligible for federal copyright protection. These include among others: ... Titles, names, short phrases, and slogans; familiar symbols or designs; mere variations of typographic ornamentation, lettering, or coloring; mere listings of ingredients or contents."

Every legally protected logo I've ever seen is trademarked either at a state or federal level.

I've considered something like an electronic notary system a number of times over the years.

I can imagine having a URL like http://[known and trusted e-notary].com/[user]/[date]/[file or md5sum] would do a lot to discourage any shennanigans.

It wouldn't serve the same purpose as having something actually notarized so you'd have to be clear about that, but it could be a source of evidence when a case went before a court.

Doesn't seem all that technically difficult - md5sums for files and an RSA keypair per day are the common starting points for most of my ideas in that direction.

A google search reveals digistamp.com. I also recall looking into this 6 or 7 years ago and finding a similar service back then.

As a designer, you usually have lots of sketches and early version lying around, as well as high resolution versions of the logo. That alone should work as proof that you are the creator.

Otherwise I guess you could e-mail a copy of your logo to your self. If it's a big provider (such as g-mail), the timestamps would be fairly reliable in a court room. Flickr is probably just as good.

As a designer, I can copy sketches or make high resolution versions of any logo and claim them as my own pretty easily. That would not work as proof that I'm the creator.

I believe metadata on the files can help. -I'm no lawyer though- or emailing a copy of the logo to yourself like you said.

Site is down now.

Try accessing the page from Google cache. http://74.125.77.132/search?q=cache:http://www.jonengle.com/...

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.

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.

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)

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.

Probably not a good idea. Already, his problem comes up as the second (and several subsequent) Google results for "stockart".

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 ]

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...

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...

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...

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....

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)

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.

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

A legal fund should be started for him and a badge for contributing to that fund should be prominently displayed on his blog.

You can find that right here - http://www.fundable.com/groupactions/groupaction.2009-04-06....

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.

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.

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.)

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.

No downtime or capacity problems at Google:

http://209.85.129.132/search?q=cache:4xeUCXpV_BcJ:www.joneng...

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