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My Work Now Made in China!

 

Anything about the “Custom Decorative Glass Tile” in the screenshot above look familiar? Friends, if you haven’t already, familiarize yourself with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA; an effort to move U.S. copyright law into the digital age by implementing several World Intellectual Property Organization treaties); and if you’re an artist, make sure you have a good lawyer just a phone call away. You never know when you might find yourself facing a situation like this one.

Recently, my assistant was doing a Google Images search and stumbled upon the website of a Chinese manufacturer which contained two photos downloaded right from my website. Both were photos that I had taken of an art glass installation that I created. There is no question of attribution or copyright ownership. (I’m not linking to their site, as I don’t actually want to increase their web traffic). The images in the screenshots clearly show my art glass installation for the CalSTRS Headquarters rebranded, without my consent, as “Ocean Blue Custom Decorative Glass Tile With Color Flow For Mural Walls.” In one photo, the manufacturer even superimposed their own watermark. Needless to say, this discovery was quite a shock.

 

 

Thankfully, I have a great lawyer, who immediately sent a “DMCA Takedown Notice” to the site’s web hosting service demanding that they remove the images – which they did. The same link now shows a totally different kind of glass tile (not mine) and sample installation, though with all the same descriptors. It should be noted that an alleged infringer has the ability to submit a DMCA Counter-Notification and this exchange can escalate into costly legal disputes. Neither a Takedown Notice, nor a Counter-Notification should be taken lightly. In any case, I will be keeping an eye on this particular website.

[The DMCA Info Website provides a sample Takedown Notice letter, so one does not necessarily need a lawyer to submit a notice. In my case, and being new to this, I felt the added credibility of a law firm’s letterhead carried some clout.]

It’s pure luck that we discovered this situation at all – the internet is a big place and it’s difficult to track images that get repurposed in this way. Who knows how often digital fraud happens. One thing you can do to protect yourself is regularly perform keyword searches that are relevant to your work and see what comes up. Google also allows you to search by image. I discovered that searching “Custom Decorative Glass Tile” — the keyword phrase that the Chinese manufacturer used to identify my images — turns up several links leading back to this company. I hope moving forward, if potential clients search for “Custom Decorative Glass Tile,” this blog post will show up in the results instead.

For further reading, I highly recommend checking out The [Legal] Artist, a Boston-based law firm that specializes in entertainment law and intellectual property matters. Greg R. Kanaan, a RISD grad and movie producer turned lawyer, pens an excellent blog that unpacks the complexities of issues like this one and is full of great advice for artists concerned with protecting their work.