Teddy Talk: Creating, Collecting, Connecting

I absolutely love him

I am sorry to see Artist Bears up on a Chinese Production Facility website.  I am certain that their only aim is to try to persuade possible customers that they can produce wonderful high quality bears.  Fact is, they do not have the knowledge to produce the bears in the picture and I would doubt that they are even aware that it is a mohair piece.   Unfortunately, it is a case of  them illegally using the picture as their own.  The only comfort I can give the artists whose work was featured is that they could of used any of the very many pictures of bears available and they obviously appreciated the very high quality work of the artists they used.In regards to copyright I am probably one of the very few artists to have actually gone through the American courts with this issue.  I would like to add that I did not initiate the case as actually it is something which does not `bother` me.  The result was a `cease and desist` which means that the offender cannot make any more of that particular bear.  However, the fact of the matter was that the judge, unlike us who can identify one artist from another very easily considered it was just a bear and regardless one was much the same as the other.  I have to add that concrete evidence like my patterns in their possession and my boxes with missing pieces in counted for nothing.  It was probably very expensive (I was not paying) and achieved a `cease and desist` on several pieces but actually did not stop them doing it again unless we wanted to take them back to the courts!!  I gave a talk on my `Bearmaking Journey` to a group of Business people last week.  Somehow we got on to copyright and I said that in the case of bears I did not think it was worth the paper it was written on.  After that, the group independently introduced themselves to each other and the three smart looking guys at the back were `Patent and Copyright Attorneys` - they must have loved me....they left shortly after.  In regards to complaints against the company featuring these artist bears I would suggest that you contact the China Toy Industry Association.  They are trying to professionalize the industry and may be more effective than any other agency, website or company.

I am urgently looking for 5mm Sparse, straight mohair (600S) in slate blue....has anyone got any.  Deb