*Update: As of February 2023, the legal issue between Paris Hilton and myself has been privately resolved
The new ‘small claims court’, the Copyright Claims Board, has been open for submissions since June 16th.
And I already filed 2 claims.
Screenshot of Copyright Claims Board dashboard showing list of my ongoing copyright proceedings. First claim is Jarman v. 11:11 Digital (Paris Hilton), and second claim is Jarman v. SHEIN Distribution Corporation
I filed my first claim against 11:11 Digital / Paris Hilton the very day the board opened. I had been checking the site since early that morning, anticipating a huge avalanche of claims being filed so I wanted to make sure I got mine in early enough.
Filing was pretty easy, but there were a few snags initially - my documents errored out when I tried to attach them, and, my private address was in public view once the claim was fully processed and then published on the site.
I quickly contacted them to find out how I could change the address to my PO Box, stressing I don’t have an attorney representing me, I’m just a woman working from home as a sole proprietor and had no idea I would be doxxing myself, as it was never fully detailed how much information would be made public. I thought it would be the case file number and names of the parties involved at least but didn’t know what would display beyond that.
It took a few days but they removed my claim from public view and fixed it so that my street address, phone number and email address are all hidden now and that’s how it is now going forward with all the claims unless it’s filed by a law firm or attorney.
As of this date, I believe all of the information and documents for the Paris Hilton case are now visible at my claim link, where there is more context & factors brought up in this claim that I haven’t shared all the details about before, along with supporting evidence: https://dockets.ccb.gov/claim/view/23
My my most recent blog post about Paris’ 3rd infringement has the links to the previous 2, but again all important details & additional links are in the claim link above: https://www.fancyfairy.com/news/2022/4/10/paris-hilton-titania-fairy-wings-infringement-3
Screenshot of the message I got from a friend, asking “are these yours” with a photo of a small stickerbook, featuring my fairy wings photo
While waiting for the compliance review to complete on my first claim, I filed another Sunday night against SHEIN. It hasn’t even been a full month since my first! Tight enough on the heels of my claim with Hilton that I was in the middle of tying up last minute questions with the NPR reporter who interviewed me for NPR’s The Indicator podcast, and they were able to mention I was already filing another.
If you’d like to listen to it, here you go! https://www.npr.org/2022/07/11/1110928086/copyright-small-claims-court
As shown in the photo above, a friend messaged me with a photo of a page of a small sticker book she’d purchased from SHEIN, asking if the photo was mine.
It is indeed a photo from my old Etsy listing of my painted Titania fairy wings. I don’t license my photos like this, and don’t allow it. I never was asked permission or paid by SHEIN.
The link for the listing was sent to me, and I found a thumbnail of this and another different wing photo of mine in the listing photos.
The above screenshots are from one listing, I’m referring to that sticker book as Sticker Book A.
Below are screenshots from another listing that also contains my green painted Teasel wings, I’m referring to that one as Sticker Book B.
Below you can see the screenshots of the entire listings, where there are thousands of customer reviews, indicating they have profited from my IP without my knowledge or permission.
What’s more, a few days before I was alerted to the sticker book infringements, I had been messaged by someone pointing out that a recent post by SHEIN on Instagram showed a model wearing what appeared to be my Titania fairy wings, but are in fact an unauthorized knock-off.
Screenshot from SHEIN’s Instagram post showing model in a bikini wearing knock-off version of Titania wings
So far it does not appear that they are selling the wearable wings, however this is mistakenly suggestive to the public that SHEIN has been working with or licensing IP from me, when that has absolutely NOT happened. I’ve never even purchased product from that company and they’ve never ordered from me.
There are even more photos of various models wearing other knock-offs of this design on their website as well under ‘grunge fairy’ clothing listings.
All of this info and documentation has been submitted to the CCB, though it may take a couple days for it to be publicly visible on the page for the claim docket, but you can follow that case here once it’s been processed: https://dockets.ccb.gov/case/detail/22-CCB-0050
This time, I noticed the CCB made changes to the submission process and now there is an alert that wasn’t there before, letting the claimants know that although our contact info will be hidden from public view, everything else submitted would be publicly viewable to everyone.
Over all, now that the private info issue has been fixed as well as the document attachment glitch, it’s a pretty easy and smooth process to file a claim. Now I wait for the CCB to process the claims and send me forms for the next step in the process. It was only $40 for each claim, and I’ll only pay the remaining $60 for them if the respondents decide to proceed rather than opt-out.
Yes, this is a voluntary process, so respondents can decide not to move forward with a claim and if so, then the only option is federal court. It’s true that would put me back to square one if that happens. However, even as expensive and stressful as federal IP cases are, does the respondent know for sure that the claimant won’t pursue the case in federal court if they opt out?
If a federal suit is then filed, will they have regret that they opted out of a far less costly way to solve the issue?
As far as I know, whether they opt out or not, the claims stay on record and remain publicly viewable. I think there may be benefits to this aspect of it.
Will respondents see this record of accused infringement as a stain on their public image? Or are they too wealthy and powerful to be bothered by yet another accusation if they already have a reputation for IP theft?
Only time will tell.
One thing I’ll say is, contradictory to the anti-copyright groups who warned us that grandmas and average Joe’s would be sued for thousands of dollars for making memes by copyright trolls, it’s simply not happening.
In fact I was pretty surprised to only be the 10th filing in line on the first day. I rushed to get it in there because I was imagining an avalanche of claims to be filed, considering how big of a problem IP theft has been for artists in the last few years especially. I worried that there was no way that only 3 people would be able to handle the massive amount of infringement happening in this country, but I’m relieved to see that I was wrong!
Instead, after just a month of being open, there are only 50 cases filed so far, including mine.
My hope is that all of us artists, most of who are struggling, will finally see some fairness restored to the rights over our works.
We haven’t had much access to the justice system, as without deep pockets we can’t afford the tens or hundreds of thousands a typical IP court case costs. This has meant that only the biggest infringement cases involving huge companies are usually worthwhile for an attorney to take a case on contingency or pro-bono, if you’re lucky.
What I actually see as a positive in this, is that the people reviewing the claims are all copyright experts unlike in a federal court case where judges & juries may not even fully understand copyright law.
For me personally, I’m happy to now have an option to pursue infringers officially, and legally, and most of all inexpensively!
It’s gotten exhausting getting nagged with “handle this through a lawyer!” or “be professional and just sue them” as if those were realistic options for everyone, because they’re not.
Even reporting to platforms with DMCA’s are not always reliable, it’s not uncommon to get a refusal to remove what seems to be an obviously clear infringement from platforms like Instagram, Facebook or Twitter.
It’s why I’ve had to resort to calling out an infringement in my social media as a last resort when the infringing party refuses to credit or remove a post using my IP without permission and I hate it every time. But for a long while it was the only thing left to do, and often it would work to get the content removed.
Now, I’m looking forward to my work seeing some validation from an official source straight from a government branch. After hearing the annoying refrain of “they’re just fairy wings” when I’ve pointed out infringements of my work, it will be nice to get an official ruling on public record that I can point to when that argument is thrown at me again.