• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

Justyna Dorsz

  • Blog
  • Store
  • Contact
  • About

Thieves

Fighting copyright infringement

A while ago, I hired an attorney in Poland to deal with people who stole my designs. Some of them paid me compensation before I had to sue, so that was fine. But some refused. Unfortunately, then the pandemic happened and also my attorney got seriously sick and couldn’t work on my cases anymore, so that slowed things down.

I bet some thieves thought I forgot about them. No such luck.

Anyway, I hired a new attorney. He prepared and filed the lawsuits. And there will be more cases to follow.

(This is just a quick update to let you guys know that this is all still in progress in case you were wondering.)

April 29, 2022 Tagged With: Copyright, Law, Thieves

A thief duplicated my store!

Someone made a replica of my store — same avatar, same cover image, same name, and of course my designs for sale.

This is insane.

Here is my store on Redbubble:

And this is an illegal copy:

I reported it to Redbubble right away so I hope they will remove it soon.

July 24, 2021 Tagged With: Copyright, Law, Redbubble, Thieves

“I stole your designs but I demand your cooperation”

I found my designs sold illegally on Amazon. I didn’t bother contacting the sellers who listed my designs. I simply reported the listings to Amazon, and they were removed. As a result, many of those sellers have had their whole stores suspended for copyright infringement.

I’ve been getting emails from those sellers. Some have threatened me with legal actions, some have wanted to officially license my designs from me. Others have written me dozens of emails begging me to retract my complaints. Just today, I’ve received another of those emails. An Amazon seller had their store suspended, and they want me to withdraw my claim of copyright infringement. They hired a lawyer who keeps writing me emails like this one:

“In the attorney letter (I attached it one more time here now), we officially confirm, that our client has deleted the listings with your images and will never list them again in respect of your intellectual property rights. 
The client was educated on IP law and will be more careful with his future listings. 
Please kindly withdraw your claim
“

The thieves, who stole from me, want me to help them have their stores — full of illegal designs — restored. I want to be clear on one thing.

I will never withdraw any of the copyright claims.

If you are one of those thieves or their lawyers, then please do keep sending me those pleading emails. You make me smile every time.

If you are an artist and had your art stolen, then never retract your claims of copyright infringement. If you retract your complaint, they will have their accounts reinstated. They might be careful and not steal from you again — they will instead steal from other artists. The only way to fight them is to have all their stores permanently removed.

May 3, 2021 Tagged With: Copyright, Law, No deal, Thieves

“We are doing you a favor”

There’s a curious thing happening with some of the thieves.

It goes like this: my lawyer sends letters asking the illegal sellers to cease infringing on my copyright and pay me compensation. Some pay, some try to negotiate, some will be sued. But often, we receive the following kind of response:

“We haven’s sold any items with your design, so we won’t pay you, but we can let you sell your design on our website if you want.”

or:

“We sold only a few items, so we won’t pay you, but we can let you sell your design on our website if you want.”

or (this is from today, slightly paraphrased):

“We will pay you 15% of what you asked, and we can offer you an opportunity to sell your designs in our store. And, of course, we didn’t even sell that much and didn’t make a profit.”

Why do all those people think that they are doing me a favor by offering me the chance to display my designs in their stores? From what I gathered, they all don’t even sell things. The designs are displayed on their websites, and Facebook pages, and Twitter, and advertised on Instagram, but nope, we haven’t sold a thing with your design, or at most, like, 5 items, but send us your designs. Forgive me guys, I am sort of not seeing the point of working with someone who: steals designs or works with suppliers that do, refuses to compensate the artists, and implies that it can all be fixed if I just send them my designs, oh and by the way isn’t it an excellent opportunity for you, you poor artist, you get to sell designs in our store, one of the thousands of online stores on the Internet.

March 9, 2021 Tagged With: Copyright, Law, No deal, Thieves

Adventures in Crime Fighting

Photo by David Clode on Unsplash

My blog is becoming monothematic lately. I’ve been spending much of my time dealing with people who steal my designs and sell them as their own, and so I mostly write about that.

Two days ago, I reported listings with my art to Amazon. They acted on it immediately and removed the listings. A few sellers then wrote to me asking to let them keep selling apparel with my design. Here are some quotes:

  • “let us sell this t-shirt till they are sold out as we have massive inventory in Amazon”
  • “this t-shirt is the best seller in our store”
  • “the new employee listed it”
  • “in the future send your designs to us”
  • “you know sometimes we can’t know if we have infringed other’s copyright”

People don’t realize that what they did is a criminal offense. But when more and more artists start suing them over copyright infringement, they will soon learn.

January 16, 2021 Tagged With: Copyright, Law, Thieves

Primary Sidebar

About Me

My name is Justyna. I am an artist and an indie game developer.
What am I doing now?

Let’s connect!
@JustynaDorsz

LINKS

Cat Book Newsletter
Fox Shiver – my designs!
TRUFFLEPIG – cats!
Our Games

  • Instagram
  • Pinterest
  • RSS
  • Twitter

My designs

AND MORE…

I rarely send something...

Popular posts

  • Can you make money on Threadless?
  • The Last Psychiatrist
  • reMarkable 2 Review
  • Unity Input System vs Rewired
  • Footprints with Visual Effect Graph in Unity
  • My most popular design ever
  • Why you don’t see your designs on Threadless
  • Roam Research – Templates
  • Etsy accepts fake DMCA counter notices
  • I hired a law firm

USEFUL

DMCA Template

Topics

  • Advice (34)
  • Art (13)
  • Artist Life (13)
  • Cats (65)
  • Copyright (15)
  • Design (89)
  • Dogs (9)
  • Games (12)
  • Law (11)
  • Mindset (28)
  • Miscellaneous (14)
  • Money (12)
  • Our book (14)
  • Personal (20)
  • Productivity (10)
  • reMarkable (11)
  • Stats (11)
  • Threadless (33)
  • Threadless Artist Shop (15)
  • Work in progress (12)

Footer

  • Instagram
  • Pinterest
  • RSS
  • Twitter

Newsletter

Justyna Dorsz · Copyright © 2012–2023 · Log in