Don’t you hate when you design something, only to find it stolen and sold by another company? Check out these two images:
The one on the left is a shirt by All Saints Apparel. The one on the right is a Valentine card by Mitch. Totally identical. It seems someone liked the design so much they snagged it and turned it into a shirt. Here is the original post about it at 4 color rebellion:
Posh London retailer All Saints Apparel plagiarized a shirt design from the gaming site 4 color rebellion. The site originally unveiled the ‘You Complete Me’ tetris-heart figure for Valentine’s Day in 2006. Designer Mitch was surprised to find that All Saints had plastered the exact same design on a shirt selling for £40—that’s like, $90! Mitch asked All Saints for an explanation, which was enough to prompt a decent resolution.
Well, luckily it looks like this has come to a happy ending. According to this post on the consumerist all is well:
You know, I didn’t expect it to happen, but things actually did end up with (somewhat of) a happy ending. I managed to get back in touch with the head of Manches, the guys that do administrative or production or whatever for All Saints, and we managed to work out a settlement.
Because they deal with plagiarism of their stuff a lot, they were apparently very receptive and sympathetic. Apparently, designers get about 2 – 3 percent of the profits in royalties. I managed to squeeze 7.5% out of them. So, that equals out to about $2,400 with the weak dollar.
Long story short, I’ve licensed the design to them for this run, and I’m still in ownership of it.
All in all, they were kind to me about it – however, from what I hear, them paying me wiped out all of their profit on these shirts. Should teach their designers a lesson!
Good for him! I hope designers start learning the internet is a good place for ideas, but not a place to steal whatever they want to profit!
