Ex-friends "sold" my original character design to each other after I rejected one of them. How do I handle this?
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:
- Artist A wasn't even active online at the time.
- Even if Artist A did this, she had no right to give away a character that legally reverted to me.
- Artist B is specifically claiming ownership of my revamped design, which Artist A never even possessed.
- 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?