Imageline, Inc. Trademark Infringement Again!

George, you little scamp, you really have been a very naughty boy again!

IMAGELINE, INC. TRADEMARK INFRINGEMENT #2

Please don't tell us you didn't know the Sydney Opera House is protected by the laws of the Commonwealth of Australia, including copyright law?

Apart from any use permitted under the Copyright Act 1968, no part may be reproduced by any process without written permission from the Sydney Opera House.

Here's what Caroline Ang, Corporate Counsel at the Sydney Opera House has to say (quote):

“The SOH brand is a very powerful brand and is well recognised all around the world. This means that the brand is one of the most important assets of the Sydney Opera House Trust. The Sydney Opera House Trust manages the use of Sydney Opera House’s image and brand on behalf of the New South Wales Government. The Trust vigorously protects the commercial exploitation of its intellectual property and does not approve use of the SOH brand in commercial contexts where there is no association between the relevant business and SOH.

The Trust does this for two reasons - first - to protect the integrity of the brand and second, to protect its commercial value. As a non-profit arts organisation, the Trust is heavily reliant on sponsorships to support its operations and it offers brand association to sponsors of a certain value. In all cases however a sponsor is only permitted to link its product with the SOH brand in a manner that is approved by SOH and which aligns with SOH brand values.

We hope that you can appreciate that our image and exclusivity are our most valuable assets commercially, so it is important that we protect them for ourselves and our valued sponsors.

Images of SOH may be used by the media but not for advertising or other commercial uses.”

So George, are you absolutely SURE the image you've produced has never been sold for commercial use? In fact, there isn't one single mention of commercial restriction within the Imageline, Inc. Terms of Service. We don't even see an image licensing agreement. How odd!

Would it be fair to say that SOH have the absolute right to know ALL your customers and licensed distributors worldwide, audit ALL your accounts and claim compensation settlements of say, $3000 for each and every image you've sold of their property?

Maybe we'll just ask Ms. Ang. We're sure she'll be interested.

HOW DOES IT FEEL?

Move on George!!

George, if you're reading this, please do everyone a favour and move on. Clip-art like the one's you produced 20 years ago are from a time when computers ran on 32k of memory, had 8 colours, went 'blip' and where Winchester hard drives only existed in large corporate firms and science labs. Whilst everyone else has accepted technological progress, gracefully thrown all their old junk to the public domain and started afresh, you're clinging to the past like a scared child clings to it's mother, frightened to cope in the big commercial competitive world. I mean, it's not like your works are 'classical masterpieces', are they?

You proudly claim that Imageline, Inc. holds one of the largest archives of high quality vector-based clip art illustrations, page designs, digital logos, cartoons, and animations in the world. For an example of this 'high quality' just look at the image below. A crudely drawn, black and white picture even a five year old can draw. It's probably sad for you to know but everyone in the graphics design world is laughing behind your back.

EXAMPLE OF IMAGELINE, INC'S CRAPPY CLIPART

George, you are not losing out because of piracy. You're losing out because no one wants to buy your rubbish drawings any more, get over it!

Time to move on George. Go do something less taxing instead, like gardening. Enjoy life instead of growing more bitter and resentful each day. You had a chance, now it's over, walk away and stop pestering everyone and wasting people's time with your petty and hate-fuelled quest.

Georgy Porgy

It seems one of our sources has discovered a photo of George and surprisingly, it's exactly how we all perceived him to look like. So here, we proudly present a picture of this fossilised old fart who spends the remainder of his pathetic life attempting to sue people.


Maybe if he makes enough money, he can go on a diet course, or at least buy a bigger belt to hold up that fat, obese stomach.

Just so you know who you're dealing with George!

One of our people received an email from George asking "is there some reason you are afraid to identify yourself"?

Let's straighten this out for you then, shall we Mr. Riddick.

We are in fact a small non-named, non-profit closed group comprised of individuals from various professional fields and industrial sectors such as IT, Law, Advertising, Journalism, Media, Government Organizations and NGOs. Our people reside in over two dozen countries around the world and across every continent. We have no 'leader' or executive committee, no hierarchy or formulated structure. We do not recruit or advertise and we most certainly do not have a website, or any published direct contactable information and just harness various resources of the Internet as and when we see fit.

Our purpose is to weed out fundamentalists who use patronising and threatening methods for nothing more than their own personal agendas and financial gain. We research the hidden and unlawful mistakes they (always) make, then subject these people to the same ridicule they dish out by giving them a taste of their own medicine.

Our use of humorous naming conventions in emails and signatures is just to evoke a tongue-in-cheek reaction but I can assure you, we are as relentless in our pursuits as the people we uncover and have the absolute full intention of letting the world know what nasty little hypocrites they are.

We're not after money, recognition or anything at all. We just enjoy kicking the idiots who enjoy kicking everyone else, especially when they prey on the defenceless and weak.

So, in answer to your question; We are afraid of nothing, we just choose to remain anonymous because an invisible enemy is far more effective than a visible one.

We are everywhere and we are nowhere.

Welcome to our realm.

George P. Riddick, III we accuse you of trademark violation.

George P. Riddick, III is a man with a mission. A man with a singular and almost fanatical crusade to seek out and destroy those he claims to have violated his copyright and therefore should be burnt in hell (or pay out substantial amounts of cash, whichever the courts decide first, I guess)!

What George P. Riddick, III is possibly unaware of however, is that his collection of bitmap clip art is vastly out-dated crap that no one in their right mind apart from the odd backwater church community or primary school would ever nowadays use. Although he still viciously pursues and targets those as well.

On the other hand, maybe he does realise this and has devilishly discovered that the only way to generate vast amounts of income, is to sue people. For example, say your clip-art was selling for $20 a piece, but you could in fact gain 150 times the value by threatening to sue them for infringement, wow. I would say at least George is a good businessman, maybe he should have been a stock broker instead because he certainly isn't that great at drawing.

With the immense and truly wonderful power of the Internet, search engines as powered by Google and Microsoft collect and index information that makes it easier for everyone to find images. Mr Riddick is ferociously against this as he believes they infringe his copyright by holding his images on their servers, and therefore people can search and use them freely.

(Read his comment to an article here)

Well, I guess of course this would be correct if the images you are so fiercely protecting do not have a visual watermark -as nearly all commercially distributed photos and drawings sensibly have! If not (in the case of Imageline, Inc.), how on earth, with the multitude of clip-art out there, much of it free, do you know who owns it? Could Mr Riddick be blamed of negligence in protecting his work online? Could he also be accused of entrapment? Think about it. I take a photo, then copyright it and throw it out somewhere on the Internet without a watermark, wait for it to turn up on Google then sue them and anyone who downloads it for infringement. What a great way to make vast amounts of money!

Oddly enough, Microsoft, (one of his despised and most targeted companies in his corporate hate campaign) belongs to the Copyright Alliance Organization, of which George is also a proud executive member. However, he hypocritically refers to this organization when dishing out one of his so-called 'official' emails which are full of patronising rhetoric written in an offensively threatening manner.

The ironic (and highly amusing) twist to all this is that the bitter and resentful George P. Riddick, III need look no further for international infringement than within his own collection of shoddy and archaic bitmaps. I noticed one example of the United Nations flag here:

IMAGELINE, INC. TRADEMARK INFRINGEMENT #1

Now, even though such flags are ineligible for copyright they are still protected by 'Article 6' of the Paris Convention (Protection of State Emblems, and Names, Abbreviations and Emblems of International Intergovernmental Organizations).

I wonder if Mr Riddick therefore realizes that depicted images (including but not limited to photographs and two dimensional drawings) representing partly or in whole of the UN emblem, name and flag are STRICTLY PROHIBITED FOR DISTRIBUTED COMMERCIAL USE without going through proper channels of procedure and obtaining permission.

Mr Riddick claims to have never been accused of any violations within the last 25 years, well I have news, now you have. Yes George P. Riddick, III, you too are seriously infringing the industrial property rights of an international organization, how does it feel?

So Mr Riddick, before you continue your tiresome, pointless and self-indulging evangelistic preaching, maybe you should look nearer home, hold yourself accountable and add Imageline, Inc. to that All Company Listing you so condescendingly produce. And how about sending the United Nations a grovelling apology and one of those huge out-of-court settlement fees that you so parasitically claim from everyone else.

And remember, an ignorant plea is never a defence in a court of law.