Voxpop

11 March 2010

If your work is used without consent, contact Anti Copying in Design for advice - potentially they will mediate on your behalf. The difficult question to ask is if it really is your work? The wrangling between Shepard Fairey and Associated Press over the Barack Obama Hope image exemplifies why the definition of creator, copy and copied is confusing. This is further compounded when - as with the Obama image - the work is manipulated from a source image to make something new (and in this case iconic), which is good - right?

James Hurst, Director, Cure Studio

Option one: Get tough and threaten them with legal action. This will most probably mean that you have lost the client for future commissions, but you will get some sort of pay-out if you are persistent. Option two: Let them off, smile and hope that they continue to commission you for future work. However, it is likely that they will continue to infringe people’s moral rights. Option three (do this anyway if you went for option one): Expose them as unprofessional idiots to the design community by sending examples to blogs, networks and creative communities.

Carl Rush, Creative director, Crush Creative

If designers don’t want to be copied, they should say so and create an audit trail behind original work. A standard e-mail signature addition raises awareness of an anti-copying policy on every e-mail communication, for example: ’All intellectual property rights are and will remain the property of (insert name). Any infringement will be taken seriously.’ Look out for Anti Copying in Design’s soon-to-be-launched digitally produced IP/confidentiality agreement. To access or receive images or creative work, the recipient ’signs’ an automatic confidentiality/IP agreement. A copy is stored by Acid.

Dids Macdonald, Chief executive, Anti Copying in Design

The fact is that you cannot lead without people following, but there is serious cause for complaint if there is ’passing-off’ of influenced work as original, or if original work is copied by a retailer that wants to profit from, not contribute to, the origination effort. The world would be a duller place without the collages of Richard Hamilton, Eduardo Paolozzi and many others, and I am pleased rather than aggrieved if my products appear in magazines or movies. For example, much contemporary music uses sampling and Google reproduces millions of images.

Sebastian Conran, Director, Sebastian Conran Associates

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