This was a pretty interesting story, here was a guy that worked all his life as a Contract Artist producing commercial graphics like logos and other stuff.
So he puts some of his designs on this website that sells your art for you and a couple years later after not earning any money from them it seems that they are trying to sue him for close to $20,000 because others grabbed his work and resubmitted it.
The simplest thing here to do for the Website selling the art would be to track down when the items were submitted. Then contact this guy and have him prove the date that he created the art and use that date to prove he was the owner of the designs.
You know ALL art is copied from other artists.
If you go to school the way they teach you is by studding the styles of other artists.
They make you buy books costing hundreds of dollars and force you to do research on corporate logos and come up with your own designs but all art is based on something.
You don’t come up with a new Pepsi Logo by taking classes drawing Nude strippers that want to make an extra $200 for posing for freshman art students and their perverted teachers. I was that Student :o(
However this seems pretty simple to prove in court.
THE REAL BAD PART
This website that is selling this guys logos that is now suing him has resorted to contacting every client they can and telling them he is being investigated for copyright infringement.
This goes beyond the limit and if this website has a lawyer they better be very careful or they will endup paying the Artist for Years worth of lost work and profit.
Anyway if you are a freelancer you should checkout this guys story.
Keep your eyes open for companies like this.
