BANNED BY FORD MOTOR COMPANY
I recently received a curious email from the printing outfit that does my on-line store printing. The message informed me of how some of my images are infringing on the intellectual rights of Ford Motor Company. This bewildered me, mainly because most of my work is for individuals, and their own cars, as apposed to pleasing to the masses by doing generic logo type shirt designs. So I check out my store, and sure enough- all of the "Ford" vehicles were flagged, and subsequently frozen from further sales. I contacted my hosting/ printing company, and they informed me that Ford , along with other vehicle makers had made infringement statements to all designs, they felt, were guilty. I basically drew people's hot rods. Because they were "Ford" hot hods- Ford feels as though they have proprietary rights over those images. Does anyone have any info on this? The attorney has yet to return my calls, and my designs are still being held hostage.
posted by jkmac at 8:21 PM
4 Comments:
I read about this on my Squarebirds site. CafePress took down his calenders as well.
It started with Jag club, according to Autoblog. I imagine that CafePress was served notice by Ford as well, and in a knee jerk reaction, they removed anything and everything that had Ford on it. No time to get the lawyers out to check to see if it was an infringement or not.
Ford may have legal ground to stand on her, I don't know, but it certainly is a bad idea. All the folks effected are the ones who are enthusiastic about your product, even while many others are not. Stupid.
Botched the link to Squarebirds. It's Squarebirds
I heard the same about a Mustang calendar that a car club put out. Until a major court distinguishes between the legal right to do what you want with your property purchased from a corporation that can't handle your use of their creation... we aren't going to have freedom we've come to expect from the US of A
justacarguy dot blogspot dot com
Nothing came from it Jesse. I just left the designs off line, as I don't have the cash to deal with an attourney of that magnitude. It's bullcrap- but what can you do?
It's not like I'm taking away income from Ford. It would be different if I was copying one of thier designs, and selling it- but I'm not. In fact- the designs are for the actual owners of the cars I depict. Frustrating!!
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