The Continuing Copyright Horror

I am sure many of you are wondering what is going on with my story about the company stealing and mass producing my beaded earring designs.

Below is the communication thus far:

I have found your website  www.wholesalebeaded.com. It saddens me to see that you are using a few of my copyrighted earring designs. The dragon fly earring e17sb2 and 8 and the Tutankhamun E 18 SB 18 are from my book Earring Designs by Sig.

I have also noticed other designs copyrighted by other artists.

You do not have the license to mass produce my earring designs in any form. Just by changing the color does not change the copyright ownership. The design is still under my copyright.

If you wish to sell these earrings, you must license the designs or remove them to prevent legal action.

Please advise me of your intent.

Hi,

These are made in India. We do custom beadwork for our customers and many of the designs you see here came from our customers that we resell on our website with their permission.

If you are a designer, and, you think that these designs came from your book, we respect that; if this helps, we can give you credit by adding your name in the description.

Please let me know what you think about this. If you have any other thoughts that are beneficial to both, feel free to share.

Ruchi.

I have read on your website that the beadwork is made in India.

I have now an additional concern. You state “…many of the designs you see here came from our customers…” How are the designs supplied to you? And how do you supply these designs to your beaders? If the designs are photocopied, or transmitted in any way from my books to you, and you again reproduce the printed designs, both you and your customers have violated the copyrights I possess on my designs. I would like to know who the customers are who are sending you the designs so that I could have my attorney contact them as well.

Your offer of crediting my name to the beadwork using my designs does not compensate for the infringement your company is actively engaged in. I make my living selling my designs and from my own beadwork. Also with respect to the other designers patterns you are using that I recognize, to set precedence of allowing a mere “Credit” in the description is not only a disservice but disrespect to the designers and giving you free reign to continue to violate copyright laws.

Designer /authors such as myself create designs so that the average crafter can use them. They were NEVER intended for mass produced commercial work, particularly made in countries outside of the US or the author’s origin to be imported back into our home countries.

If you wish to use the designs in this manner, I may be open to a financial agreement set out per design, per year. I will not agree to you using ANY of my designs in ANY way until an agreement is met. I am insisting that you remove ALL of my designs in every color way until such time.

The designs I have noted  that are from my book Earring Designs By Sig Vol 1are:

Dragon fly earring e17sb2 and 8

Tutankhamun E 18 SB 18

Elephant E14 SB14 and 13

Yellow Thunderbird" is actually "tropical fish" in my book  E16, SB18

Polar Bear E12 SB 5, 21

Turtle  E8 SB27

Brown White 4 square (Desert Tapestry in my book)  E16 SB 28

Red Green Octopus, Orange Yellow Flower, Copper yellow flower (Poinsettia in my book Earring Designs By Sig #2)  E16 SB 34, #6SB 51 and 58

Brown Cat, Tutankhamun (Koala in my book) E8 SB3 and E 7 SB 11

Attached is the cover of Earring Designs by Sig and a copy of the Polar Bear Earring from your website which you can see is on the cover of the book.

Please advise of your intent to respect my copyright and come to an agreement of either removing the copyrighted material or coming to a financial agreement for the commercial use of my designs.

If I do not hear from you by Jan 25, 2012, I will take the appropriate legal remedies to protect my work.