I've recently found out that one of my images was used by an artist to do an illustration that he is now showing as his original work.

His work is not just based on my image, it IS my image itself that he retouched in such a way that is not a photo anymore but an illustration.

This is happening in the US. I am not American and I'm not completely familiar with this country's laws so I don't know what should I do. I'm far from being rich so I don't want to hire a lawyer that might be adding a new problem.

Any advice?

Thanks

Sometimes your only recourse is to expose the person for the jerk he/she is showing a link to your original as reference and then to the person's rendition followed by the words, this person stole my work. Exposing fraud sometimes is 1000% more effective then legal settlements. No one will want to work with a crook (or buy their laundered stuff).

Hire a lawyer to draft a letter to cease and desist threatening to sue him if he doesn't comply. There are many lawyers available who can do this in a few hours, and it shouldn't cost more than a couple hundred dollars. Having a lawyer send a C&D is usually plenty enough to get him.

If his work is being shown at a gallery, make sure to send the copies of the letter there. Also do research on the artists portfolio, and have the letter sent to any and all galleries that have featured his work.

If he is an artist, chances are he won't have any money to try and fight you.

Basically there isn't much you can do, other than to get him to stop, so you might as well try to scare the bejesus out of him with legalese.

I would be curious to know how they stole the image? Did they break into your house/office and take the computer, or some other way?

balls wrote:
Hire a lawyer to draft a letter to cease and desist threatening to sue him if he doesn't comply. There are many lawyers available who can do this in a few hours, and it shouldn't cost more than a couple hundred dollars. Having a lawyer send a C&D is usually plenty enough to get him.

If his work is being shown at a gallery, make sure to send the copies of the letter there. Also do research on the artists portfolio, and have the letter sent to any and all galleries that have featured his work.

If he is an artist, chances are he won't have any money to try and fight you.

Basically there isn't much you can do, other than to get him to stop, so you might as well try to scare the bejesus out of him with legalese.

Thanks but the thing is that I don't want to spend money on this. If he were making some profit out of it I would do it but I won't spend a couple of hundred dollars just to tell him not to tell people it his original art.

Scott Sewell wrote:
I would be curious to know how they stole the image? Did they break into your house/office and take the computer, or some other way?

He knows the model who appears in the photo so maybe she showed the image to him or maybe he got it online. I have plenty of images online and every now and then some retoucher or artist asks me to use one of them and give me credit, and I don't have a problem with that. The thing is that this guy never asked for my permission and he is even saying it is an original.

Alvaro3663 wrote:
Thanks but the thing is that I don't want to spend money on this. If he were making some profit out of it I would do it but I won't spend a couple of hundred dollars just to tell him not to tell people it his original art.


Copyright infringement effects all of us, so good luck with what ever you do decide! I hope you're able to get a satisfactory outcome.