knick knacks & ric rac

THANK YOU so much for your comments and support on the supreme unpleasantness of the last post. You don’t know how much it means to me! I really appreciate it so much.

It’s so shocking and gross and beyond disheartening when this type of thing happens, and I know it happens all the time. I was notified of the copies by a fellow independent designer (who has also had her designs ripped off) she noticed the rip-off skirts being sold on Dawanda.com. I have contacted Dawanda about the copyright violations, and I have emailed the company doing the copying and running the online shop. As of yet I have received no response from any of them, and the items are still on Dawanda and the online shop. I guess I don’t know why that surprises me, but it does. I’m going to mail actual letters. I’m still trying to figure out how to mail them a knuckle sandwich.

UPDATE: THE OFFENDING ITEMS HAVE BEEN REMOVED, THANK YOU!!!

This is just so insanely frustrating. I know i’m not the first and unfortunately won’t be the last artist or designer to get royally ripped off.

I find so much insipiration in things that I see-knick knacks, vintage textiles, folk handicrafts- and I love taking that inspiration and turning it into my own original designs, and I also love sharing here on my blog the different things that inspired the screen prints.

I take so much care and thoughtfulness as to how the prints work on the skirt shapes, the proportions of the design elements and how they look on a body wearing them and carefully choose colorways. I can’t decide if it’s more frustrating to me that the designs were copied, or that they were copied SO BADLY! I’m mortified to think that anybody might mistake that half-assed crap for one of my original designs.

All of my original screen prints and artwork are protected by US copyright, and thanks to the Berne Convention, that protection also extends internationally to countries that have joined it, Germany included.

Any and all advice you may have to share is greatly appreciated!

Thank you so much again!!! You guys are the greatest. I’m not going to let this get me down, and I’m not going to let it stop me from adding some new goodies to my site that I was so excited about making last week.

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 18th, 2010 at 4:41 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.