Elum Blog

You learn something new everyday – we should all be so fortunate!  On Thursday, I received an email from my webhost that they received a DMCA complaint involving my domain, elumdesigns.com.  Having never heard of a DMCA notice I immediately clicked the link in the email to read what it was all about.  It seemed that I was being accused of “infringing on copyrighted material” that belonged to Dolce Press.  Quite shocked, I immediately forwarded the email and notice to my copyright attorney for review.  For those of you that have never heard of a DMCA notice, click this link to learn about it:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Millennium_Copyright_Act

In a nutshell, Elum is being accused of infringing the “copyright protected” designs of Dolce Press, which I believe were copied from us in the first place.  Make sense?  I don’t think so either.

Elum has the right to display images of what we believe are infringing copies of Elum proprietary designs.  The images from Dolce Press were placed on our site to illustrate our belief that Elum’s protected designs were being copied by Dolce Press in violation of Elum’s rights, and to allow consumers and the industry to make up their own minds about it.  That is a fair use under copyright law.

In order to avoid costly attorney fees and all of the BS associated with having to deal with a situation like this, we decided to remove the Dolce Press images that we believe were “inspired” by our designs in the first place and just get on with business, and life.  We made our point – we got Dolce’s attention, and we have made it clear that Elum will protect its proprietary rights, as should everyone who feels that they have been violated.

If you believe a website is displaying your copyrighted materials without permission, you may be able to send a DMCA takedown notice to the site host and have the offending material removed.  Click this link for more information:

http://www.chillingeffects.org/dmca512/faq.cgi

The original blog post “Is Imitation the Sincerest Form of Flattery?” can be seen here, without images of course…  http://www.elumdesigns.com/blog/category/flattery/

Disclaimer:  I am not an attorney; this blog contains our opinions, is not legal advice and is for informational purposes only.  I do not endorse the third party links contained herein, and have no connection or interest in or to them.  They are provided as is, and may or may not contain information useful for your particular situation.

I’m not sure who came up with this phrase but I have to say that I disagree with it.  When I come across a design of ours that has “inspired” another designer – and there have been quite a few lately -  it sets the tone for a pretty bad day and I find it hard to get things done.  There’s nothing worse than spending countless hours on a design project, trying to get it just right and then someone comes along and well, you take a look.

This is the third time in two weeks that I have found  someone who has been very inspired by our work.  I have decided to post a column about it as a way of making others aware that its happening to everyone, not just us.  So here is the first in a series of posts.

Elum Lucidity invitation introduced in 2007:

Dolce Press’ business card design can be found here:

CHANG BUSINESS CARD

Humm… looks pretty similar to me…   When I called to discuss this with the owner (I spoke to a man) he said that his client (shown above) wanted a “wavy pattern on her cards.”  Is there only one wavy pattern out there?  I guess so!

Here’s another interesting piece by the same company.

Elum Empress invitation suite introduced in 2007

Dolce Press’ invitation can be seen here:

FIFTH AVENUE INVITATION

They did change the small image in the center of the intersecting lines…  You be the judge.

This is an update to this post: 7/3/2009

So I happened to stumble across yet another eerily familiar designs of ours on the Dolce Press website:

Elums Quilted Blankies Birth Announcement designed in 2005:

Dolce Press Business Card designed not too long ago:

JONES BUSINESS CARD

I am now at a total loss for words on this one.  Yuk!

So I happened to stumble across yet another eerily familiar designs of ours on the Paper Chez website: Elum Orchid Bloom designed in 2005:

Paper Chez designed 2008:

Here’s the link to the Paper Chez copy of the Orchid Bloom invitation.  They even named it Orchid…

http://www.paperchez.com/enlarge_orchid.html

You make the call.