My art gets stolen all the time.
I have been through many copyright infringement cases - some have been resolved amicably, and there are ones that have taken more work...
This isn’t exactly animal-specific, but it’s animal-world and animal-people related, so I want to talk about it for a second.
Tumblr has recently been becoming much more conscious of how important it is credit art to the artists that made it and exactly how much damage is done to creators when their work is stolen and/or reposted. With the proliferation of Facebook pages that profit off of screenshotting content from other sites and reposting it with little to no credit, this awareness is thankfully starting to grow on other social media sites as well. But in the real world, art theft and copyright infringement is still a major issue, especially for people who do animal art.
Recognize this dog? People keep trying to steal him and others like him.
The artist behind the well-known Doggie Drawings - infographics and posters that teach people about dog body language - is Lili Chin. She’s produced a ton of amazing dog art over the years in a very distinctive style. It seems like every time I turn around she’s fighting a new copyright battle or finding out that yet another company is producing items with her stolen art on them. Lili has had to fight major retailers and their suppliers for the rights to control reproduction of her own work, including Nordstrom, Walmart, and Kohls.
And now, her work is being stolen by Old Navy, and they’re using all their corporate might to try to squash an independent artist’s ability to fight back. As she said in her blog post linked above:
“I have been through many copyright infringement cases - some have been resolved amicably, and there are ones that have taken more work. This case against Old Navy (Gap) is not getting resolved right now because Old Navy is denying copyright infringement.
They are being totally unapologetic, and have said that it would be a “bad business decision” for me to expect to be reasonably compensated for the use of my art. Instead of compensating me, they have chosen to pay a large law firm to fight me, and have even asked the judge to order me to pay THEIR legal fees.
When a company as large and mainstream as Old Navy steals my art and profits from it, and is unapologetic about it, I cannot afford NOT to fight this. My lawyers and I will be fighting this for as long as it takes.”
To support the artists who draw the cute puppers you love, alert them if you think you’ve seen copyright infringement, and please, please make sure you’re buying from them directly and not purchasing things with their designs on them from the companies that are ripping off their work.
Since Lili’s original post (the one linked above) is also on tumblr, I highly suggest reblogging it directly and/or sharing it to other social media sites as a way to help her get more visibility for her case.
