I'll try to stop boring everyone with my legal woes about stolen artwork soon, but in case anyone's interested in the scale of theft by massive companies from independent artists & designers, take a look at this article by i-D about how fashion retailer Zara has nicked designs from indie artist Tuesday Bassen. It's appallingly blatant! All artists / designers need to take note and help raise awareness of thieving bastardry on a global scale.
Here's an excerpt I particularly relate to:
"Tuesday Bassen is an LA-based independent artist and pin and patch maker who came forward last week with claims that her designs had been stolen by the Spanish retailer Zara. She wrote on Instagram, "'I've been pretty quiet about this, until now. Over the past year, @zara has been copying my artwork (thanks to all that have tipped me off — it's been a lot of you). I had my lawyer contact Zara and they literally said I have no base because I'm an indie artist and they're a major corporation and that not enough people even know about me for it to matter. I plan to further press charges, but even to have a lawyer get this LETTER has cost me $2k so far. It sucks and it's super disheartening to have to spend basically all of my money, just to defend what is legally mine."
I'm lucky to be receiving some advice from a sympathetic and benevolent intellectual property lawyer at the moment, but I'm aware that at some point I'm going to have to scrape together the cash to defend my artwork too. Ugh, it really does suck! Good luck, Tuesday.