r/arttheft

Okay this is half to vent half to just figure out if there something I can do.

I previewed the name of a book that I really wanted to write. I’m an artist and the name had never been used before. I didn’t trade mark the book name fell on rough times for back up and decided… time to act on things and trade mark… except… someone trade marked something entirely similar in the SAME FIELD 🙂‍↕️. They just reversed the freaking order!! They reversed the order and I’m so flustered because who even are you as an artist!? To steal an idea and then trade mark it 🥲. So yes. I’m going to go cry now. So tell me… is there any way to beat this? I just found out it’s live and pending and it’s been posted since Jan of this year but I posted my book July of last year and they filed in August. I’m disgusted but I get it.

Let’s say we both sell art

I posted an example title of let’s say

The flame within
And then they trade marked

The inner flame 🙂‍↕️

Any hope?

I used to be part of an online art community where I became friends with an artist (let's call her Artist A). Artist A was facing heavy public backlash and accusations of tracing/stealing character designs from a very popular creator in the community. To help her out, I designed a brand-new, original character for her to use. Our explicit agreement was that if she ever stopped using the character, ownership would revert back to me.

Eventually, Artist A started designing her own concepts and officially gave the character back to me. I took the design, heavily revamped it, fleshed out a backstory, and integrated it into a major animated passion project that I have been developing for over a decade.

During this time, I was also friends with another person in the circle (Artist B) and a few of her close friends. Things went south when Artist B made romantic advances toward me. I turned her down, which caused her to completely turn on me. She and her friends began posting defamatory "call-out" posts about me online, making up complete lies out of spite.

The drama escalated when one of Artist B's friends claimed that Artist A had "given" her my revamped character to sell, and that she had officially sold it to Artist B.

This makes no sense for a few reasons:

1. Artist A wasn't even active online at the time.
2. Even if Artist A did this, she had no right to give away a character that legally reverted to me.
3. Artist B is specifically claiming ownership of my revamped design, which Artist A never even possessed.
4. Before the fallout, Artist B had explicitly told me how much she loved this specific new design.

This is just the tip of the iceberg with this group, but it's the first major instance of them trying to steal my intellectual property. Has anyone dealt with targeted community theft like this, and what is the best way to protect my project moving forward?