Jon Engle, a freelance logo designer has been accused of stealing his own work.
Won't put much explenation here, as it is all explained in his blog:
http://www.jonengle.com/2009/04/accused/
excerpts:
Quote:
I was first contacted by a stock art site in July of last year. They hit me with a bill for a whopping $18,000! I had an account with the site. Years ago I purchased an illustration of a chef’s hat for a client’s project. So, I thought this was some accounting mistake. Nope. This was a bill for new images. Very familiar images. They were images from several of my logos; 65 of them in fact. That breaks down to about $275 per image. They actually wanted me to pay them $275 for each one of MY images!
Quote:
When I refused to pay the bill they hired a law firm specializing in copyright infringement. The attorney called and offered a settlement of $18,000. How is that any different than the bill? I refuse to pay THEM for work I created. That is the epitomy of ridiculous. The attorney didn’t like my response. He threatened to sue. I say BRING IT ON! I have no doubt I can win in court.
However, the new tactic I discovered this morning is so much harder to fight. They (lawyers) are calling or emailing every one of my clients they can find. They inform the client that I’m being investigated for copyright infringement and that the logo I designed for them may have been stolen from their client. After discovering my ban from Design Outpost I began contacting clients to see exactly who they’ve been in touch with.
Basically someone probably copied his work, now Jon is being prosecuted for about 18000$ by Stockart.com and Artlaws.com for copyright infringement. Problem is it is his own work.
A fund has been set up to help Jon with his legal case estimated at 5000$.
Since there a couple of designers here, I thought you might be interested to follow up on this case.
ps: if you're interested in participating with the funding.
http://www.fundable.com/groupactions/groupaction.2009-04-06.6402295564
