Hasta La Ideas

An interesting DIY copyright battle has been going on since late last week between the stationary firm Paperchase and an artist named Hidden Eloise. The latter claims the former blatantly copied one of her illustrations she’d been selling on Etsy. Paperchase responded by essentially saying, “Nope, we bought our design from a reputable source and we trust they didn’t steal it.” Not being able to spend the money on legal help, Eloise took to Twitter last week, which set off an incredible firestorm against the company, forcing it to scramble to respond. They’ve replied with both a statement, once again reaffirming that there was no theft involved, as well as a Twitter account to help control the damage. And so that’s where things are at for the moment. Personally speaking, we have to say that the two images are remarkably similar, and so we understand the outrage. If the story continues to get attention and fester, we think this will probably pan out with a Shepard Fairey-like confession, but there’s also always a very slight chance that this was all just a crazy coincidence. It’s a big internet after all and, mathematically, things like this are bound to happen. We’ll just have to wait and see how it all pans out.

Update: Hidden Eloise wrote in to let us know that the designer Paperchase had originally gotten the work from has come forward and admitted the theft.

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