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OK, Here's how it goes ~ Alibaba is HUGE. And, yes, they do have designers that could duplicate almost any piece they can see. It's just a matter of if they find a design that they think will make them a decent profit. Again, as I have been told, the only way that we can stop them is if we contact a U.S. representative of the company, then we might be able to stop them at Customs into the U.S.A.
Karen
"a bear by kim"get squeeking peeps, its true, the squeeky wheel gets the oil, after mythering them for days, my piccie has been removed and i must say there was also a few choice words to get to this point... dont be nice, they havent !!
GJOYful BearsWell done Kim, one pic down quite a few to go lol. Don't worry about their "choice words" ha ha, they're in the wrong not you. The problem is not just them pinching artist bear pics though, it's them scamming so many innocent people...... If everyone who knew about this emailed them and kept going I think they'd be forced to stop at least for a while. I mean if hundreds of people "grumped" at them lol.
Posts: 3I 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.
Well, cheeky me enquired about getting some bears made lol. They haven't replied with anything I can understand, its all in Chinese :crackup:
GJOYful Bears:crackup: :crackup: :crackup:
I wonder how they get sales in the first place then if they don't even communicate with customers who speak english lol. Makes you wonder.
Creative Design Studio (RKR4CDS)VERY well said Deb, from the other side of this equation.
Thx for your input!
We really are spitting-in-the-wind, for all it will get operations like this shut down, but as fair-minded ppl like we all expect others to be as well, we also cannot just sit by and let any injustice go unchallenged.
hggzz
Bobbie
PennsylvaniaThe unique aspects of the work are what's copyrighted.
Other people can make Bears and sell them but the features of the face, body, clothing, character and name are what makes one Bear different than another. That is what's copyrighted.
They can't take the design of your Bear and change one thing and call it a new work.
You can make a plush mouse character but you can't make one that looks like Mickey Mouse. Not even if you name it "Morty Mouse." Not even if you give it different clothes. It has to be "substantially different."
The problem is that it is the courts that decide what is similar and what is different. It is up to the copyright holder to pursue a claim if he thinks he is being copied.
Patents are different. They cover a device or a method of doing something. If another person can create a device or a process that does the same thing as yours but does it in a different way, they can sell the item but they can't just rearrange the parts and avoid being sued.
Copyrights protect the physical manifestation of a thought or idea. It's not good enough to simply change things around. You have to make something that is different.
