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In a note sent to David Farber's Interesting People mailing list, webmaster Judy Decker of Ohio-based art education site Incredible Art Department calls attention to the plight of visual artist Don Stewart.
Stewart drew this picture (also shown here) of a VW Bug, which he was forced to remove under threat of litigation. He requests that those concerned about VW's overreaching copyright claims write company CEO Frank Witter to complain.
I was gonna be an artist but I couldn't afford the legal team.
What's really staggering is that this case has absolutely nothing at all to do with copyright.
And why hassle artists anyway? Why not hassle AutoTrader for publishing photos of actual VWs? (That's not a copyright infringement either, but a photograph of an actual VW product is more relevant to copyright than hand drawing a bunch of objects assembled in the shape of a VW bug.)
Mental note: stop drawing bowls of fruit or risk legal action by DelMonte (copyright infringement) and/or Monsanto (patent infringement).
Ian Betteridge at Technovia suggests it is Trademark law which is being used to harass the artist.
http://technovia.typepad.com/technovia/2006/01/customer_servic.html
Boo
(Jack boot wearing VW owner who inadvertently keeps finding new ways to contribute to his own oppression.)
Don, unfortunately, made the mistake of selling copies of a design that was copyrighted. He'd have the same problem had he used Mickey mouse of Barbie's likeness or name in his product.
It's perfectly legal to do a single piece of art featuring a copyrighted image but you can't sell a whole series of them.
It's a funny world.
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