Astonished similarities between artworks, we need advices

My name is Nguyen Thanh Vu and work as graphic designer and illustrator in 4-Leaf Clover studio in Vietnam. I knew and joined Threadless a long time ago but just start to submit recently in THE NEXT BIG TEE contest. Because it doesn't have a material theme, so beside making new artworks, I chose some old which I did for fun or personal reason and were not used for any commercial purposes. "Free" is one of the old which I made in September, 2012 and was posted on my Facebook.

You can check the image of Free on Facebook

And here is the Free which I submit on Threadless

Mr. Wayne posted a link : Barbed wire birds by stencilab and I am very very astonished when open it. Because as I said I made my Free in September, 2012. I thought about an image of freedom cause it really meant to me at that moment and i saw thorns. So I thought why not using the opposite of freedom to talk about freedom? That's how it become. The idea came to me naturally and it is simple so I didn't search any reference.

I know I don't have any proof except the creating date of my file but it doesn't mean anything compared with the time of "Barbed wire birds" by stencilab which was posted in 60 months ago.

I create this thread to tell you all of this. If the host of this contest see it and decide to eliminate my design out, I will have no opinion eventhough i'm so dissapointed. I hope continuously sumbit to Threadless soon.

But can you guys give me some of your wisely advices since i have no idea about how we avoid this case not happen in the future? Do you guys often register copyright for your artworks? And how do you do it?

Thank you for viewing.

Mr-Wayne

on Oct. 5 '13 @ 0:28

Alumni

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It is totally normal you don't know that this idea's already existed, there is so much pictures in this world! Sincerely I didn't send this link for you remove this picture of the contest but for you know this picture and for you haven't any problems afterward! Try to buy the copyright or inform the staff!

4_Leaf_Clover_studio

on Oct. 5 '13 @ 15:28

Thank you for your kind comment, we will register our artworks asap and inform the staff right now. Can i ask you guys about how you do the copyright registration? Is there anything we should take notice or something like that?

celandinestern

on Oct. 6 '13 @ 8:54

I don't think you need to register your designs in any particular way, all you should do before putting a lot of work into an idea is to do a search and try and check if something similar has been done before. You can also post a rough sketch here in the forum and ask if someone had done it before. It happens a lot, we all think about the world in similar ways and sometimes people will come up with the same idea independently. Then it's up to you and the other artist to decide if the ideas are too similar to pursue, or you can decide that even though they have similar elements they are different enough and both can be put to voting. Basically as long as you try your best to make sure your idea hasn't been done before, you're ok.

Morkki

on Oct. 6 '13 @ 10:40

There is no need to register copyright in any way, you automatically have the copyright when you create something.

louisroskosch

on Oct. 6 '13 @ 10:54

Visit my Artist Shop | Score my design

don't sweat it too much, there is a bit of hive mind going on with tee shirt concepts amongst designers. just do as celandinestern says and research before you draw it, because it most likely will happen again, happens a lot with me. i even did a design the other day that i did research and someone drew a very similar one and unleashed it on the world just before i did..

ivanrodero

on Oct. 6 '13 @ 12:45

There's right now two designs now voting that are pretty similar to works of mine and even if it is annoying this kind of stuff happens all the time and the most probable cause is coincidence.

on Oct. 6 '13 @ 23:41

yup.. just saw another guy today rip another idea.. right from my brain! assholes.

on Oct. 8 '13 @ 6:56

Thank you guys, i did inform the threadless team and let them judge my case since i still feel uneasy for some of you guys might be upset with my work. So i let them do their responsibility. I will take ur advices in my next works. Thank you very much, i really really appreciate :)