Copyright Infringements with your Designs
@stine1online (835)
Germany
August 12, 2015 9:21am CST
Being pretty active on several print-on-demand websites, where I am selling photo gifts with my photos and designs on them, I (and my fellow designers) are permanently facing copy cats who are stealing our work. There is a huge problem with the Amazon Marketplace or on Aliexpress which belongs to Alibaba. Chinese (sorry for this generalization but 99.9% are from China) sellers are downloading our graphics, add them to their products (smartphone cases and pillows) and are then selling them for a much lower price.
They are not only stealing our designs, they are stealing our potential customers, too.
On Amazon, it has become so bad that there is even an online petition on Change.org for Amazon to take those fake shops down.
I have added a link to my blog post in this discussion for reference purposes, in case you are interested in more details, there are screenshots and examples what I am talking about:
So anyway, has this ever happened to you or a friend? Doesn't matter whether it was online or offline. Did someone steal your art/work?
And what do you think about this issue on the Amazon Marketplace?
Are you a designer on Society6? Did you know that Society6 is also selling our products on Amazon - which is great since it broadens our potential customers. But somehow, Chinese sellers (I have on...
5 people like this
3 responses
@topffer (42155)
• France
12 Aug 15
I am not a designer, and it never happened to me, but I know that it is very difficult to deal with counterfeiters in Asian and African countries. China seems now to consider counterfeiting as a plague, and tries to stop it. It is not admissible for me that Amazon let them sell counterfeited products in their store. I would consider to start a class action with other victims against Amazon if I was you.
1 person likes this
@stine1online (835)
• Germany
13 Aug 15
Well a class action is expensive. And trying to find the culprits in China would also be almost impossible. And suing Amazon? Oh, I guess no matter how good and expensive our lawyer would be, they would find a loop hole.
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@topffer (42155)
• France
13 Aug 15
@stine1online Class actions have been created to sue large companies. The only thing to prove is that your designs have been counterfeited and have been available on Amazon and that Amazon did nothing to remove the counterfeited design from their shop, so you would not have to find who has counterfeited them. Laws are a bit different around the world, and I do not know German laws, but in France, the seller risks exactly the same than the counterfeiter, and the client a fee.
@stine1online (835)
• Germany
14 Aug 15
@topffer Ok but then you have the problem that although my designs/photos were stolen, the images that were grabbed online originated from Zazzle and Society6. So technically, their images got stolen and these companies own the copyright. Many scammers did steal the image of a pillow case with my photo on it, so they did steal the image of that pillow. It really is complicated.
And designers all over the world are scammed, I am not sure how to all get them combined in one law suit. That alone would take ages.
@minx267 (15526)
• Hartford, Connecticut
12 Aug 15
I have been dealing with amazon for months now.. every few days I am asking them to remove some new thief. Then they give me the run around asking me over and over how is this a violation, even though I explain exactly what is happening.. it seems like they are just stalling and then the tell me to fill out the same form letter for violations over and over and over... it is so irritating!
@minx267 (15526)
• Hartford, Connecticut
13 Aug 15
@stine1online Here's some good news.. I actually just searched my name on Amazon again and there are NO violators/thieves listed anymore... I wonder if that petition that we signed did some good?!
1 person likes this
@stine1online (835)
• Germany
13 Aug 15
@minx267 Mhh, I doubt that. But I think Amazon only adds new products to their marketplace once or twice a week, so check again after Saturday/Sunday.
@stine1online (835)
• Germany
13 Aug 15
Oh yes! In the beginning - when I started to report a few weeks ago - the first violations were removed pretty quickly. Now it seems that Amazon is annoyed by us artists and it takes ages and sending emails back and forth :-(
I do hope that Zazzle is more helpful with this than Society6!
@thesids (22180)
• Bhubaneswar, India
14 Aug 15
I found this late. Cannot help, I am still finding it cumbersome to locate the discussions started by friends.
This was a really bad experience with me. I had just re-started working with websites - when I was able to get out of bed in 2008. There was a client - a local guy, who ran an NGO. He called me stating I should develop a design for his website. I know, I am no good with designs, but somehow, created one for the Home Page and send him the JPEG version for review. He did not call back. A week later, when I called up he said, the project is down as there was some problem at his NGO. I forgot about all that. 3 months later, a girl (one of my ex-students) comes to me and says, she has been asked by her uncle to get his website ready. But she has been handed only the JPEG of the design and as such she needs some guidance on how to proceed. I ask her to show the JPEG so that it will be easy to guide her. And she comes up with the JPEG I had emailed to that local NGO Owner. I showed her the email, and handed her the PSD. I dont know what happened to that site - whether it went live or not, but I haven't really understood why people do that.
This experience did teach me that Watermarking is important.
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