Copyright infringment

[muses_nightmare]

At least I believe that's what this is. So backstory, a few months ago I made a couple of posters for an art co-op store in my hometown. I did them for free, and I thought I did a really nice job on them, I created the vector images that I used on the poster myself, with only a little reference (the image consisted of the outlines of ravens, so I had a couple of pictures).

Now comes the problem. The woman who got me to do them, well her husband, decided that it was just fine to take my artwork and make another poster and a brochure from it. I in no way gave them permission to do this, I didn't even give them the original files, just pdfs so they could print the posters. Meaning they took my images from the posters I created, I have no idea what they did to my work (I don't live in town), but since I had originally created it and since my name was on the original posters (they insisted I put Designed by My Name on the bottom), I don't know if people are associating his work with mine, and I really don't want that happening, especially since I'm betting it doesn't look professional(as with most "design" in my hometown). My mom is going to be getting copies of both to show me, she'll also be talking to the lady, since I don't know what happened to her e-mail address.

I'm royally pissed about this. I'm giving them a chance since they maybe didn't realize that they didn't own the images (or didn't realize that it was an image I created especially for those posters), but if they refuse I may have to try and do something legally, if I can. Or at least threaten it, which may work. It would be better if I didn't have to actually take any legal action since I can't really afford to, and I may end up having to just deal with it if they don't agree to take the materials down.

[Ginger Tea]

This one can be a grey area, sometimes a contract will specify who owns the copyright at the end of the job, most companies get the copyright attributed to them and not the designer hired to do the job (in house or freelance) atleast you are getting your name on the image.

Now doing a job for a small vendor, band or event, it might be seen as a one off job for the gig and never needed again so no attention is paid to what happens afterwards again they might like the logo and want to reuse that over again with other artists or just by itself, then they should atlest get the rights to the logo as a sparate image to do so as they wish, not just crop it out of an existing image.

But if they just got a poster of the mona lisa (for example) from a shop, it doesn't mean they after having bought a copy can crop her eyes and have a widescreen poster of her looking at you and everyone in the store, which is kinda where your example is without anything stipulating who owns the image rights, they just had a duplication licence to print as many posters as needed

[muses_nightmare]

It was just kind of something I did as a favour because my mom "works" at the store (it's an odd sort of set up, a bunch of artists put their stuff in the store and sell it, they pay a fee to be in the store), if they had asked me I would have done both of those items for them, no charge, since I had the original files. The main issue I'm having is that my moms says the guy put some sort of thing on there saying "certified..." uh something, from what I understand it's basically saying that he designed everything.

I doubt I'd bother with anything legal, aside from maybe saying that I would if they refuse to take down the materials. It's just a pissoff, people in that town have no clue, even the so called "graphic designers" (there are a total of 2, and both are equally awful), I think they just figured they could use any image they wanted. I'm sure if they had found something on google that was suitable they would have used that too.

The way that the guy that did it is described he sounds like someone who thinks he can do everything better than everyone, just to prove that you don't need the education some people do in order to do a job. I loathe people like that.