Zounds! We’ve Been Plagiarized!

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Hey dudes – this is your friendly, neighborhood Mitch here. I’ve been completely overwhelmed by the response that our Valentine’s Day cards have been getting lately! Absolutely amazing! I mean, I expected that you Rebels would see them and smile a little bit, but I never expected to get nearly 2,000 diggs in one day!

Absolutely amazing! We even got a bump from Kotaku, from DS Fanboy, a mention from Nintendo Wii Fanboy, and even GameSetWatch! Plus, so many others! Wow!

But one thing that struck me was a comment that I saw left on the waxy.org blog entry by a guy by the name of Greg:

It would appear that All Saints (allsaintsshop.co.uk) are using the tetris heart as one of their T-shirt designs (search their site for ‘Adoration’). I do hope that they had permission to do so…

Uuuwaaah?! Seriously? Hold on, I had to see it with my own two eyes. Sure enough, after I went to the site and punched ‘Adoration’ into the search bar, I found this.

It’s my card’s design!

Follow me through the break for the full comparison picture and a couple more thoughts!

To be entirely honest with you guys, I’m completely flattered that someone liked my design enough to steal it at all! After seeing the thing get dugg and be displayed in a Japanese game store, I was completely taken aback at how these things accelerated. I have no idea what to think – I-I-I’m honestly elated! People are enjoying them! Woooooooo! This is fantastic!

But… I don’t know how to feel about this! I talked a bit with Andy Baio of waxy.org, and together, we discovered that this All Saints place is a huge, up-scale high fashion store with 15 stores in London alone!

I dunno. Peep it for yourselves:

As you can see ““ minus the tacky fake vintage print ““ it’s lifted from the image exactly.

So, I’m a bit confused on what to do or how to feel. It feels a bit like a perversion of the original idea.

I thought that it’d be a good idea to bring it to the surface a bit. I don’t want these guys to stop selling the shirt (because, frankly, I think it’s terrific that so many people are enjoying it), but, still? Really?

I know that blog posts usually end up all neat and tied up, but really, I’m lost on what to freakin’ do.

[UPDATE:] Hey guys! I just got up (it’s about 1PM here in the EST, and I was up until about 4:30 AM last night writing e-mails to some of our friends and contacts around the Internet), and the support that this is getting is absolutely fan-freakin’-tastic! Thanks, you guys! Anyway, I thought I’d give you guys an update so far to what’s happening right now.

Last night, I wrote an e-mail to All Saints, forwarding it to every possible e-mail address that I could find within the company. In the letter, I basically gave them the rundown that they’re swiping the design, gave them hard dates, told them that I’m either expecting compensation and continued royalties. And if they don’t want to give me royalties, an immediate C&D of the sale of the shirts.

Then, I just asked them to elevate the e-mail to whomever is concerned with this.

So, this morning, I got an e-mail from Tim Evans, Head of Production for All Saints. In it, he says that his company is “treating this very seriously,” and asked for my US telephone number.

Okay. So, if they call me within a few hours, it’ll be good, and we’ll have made some headway into finding an answer to this problem. At the very least, like so many of you guys have helpfully said, it’ll be nice to get a friggin’ explanation at the very least.

As for any money that I would get, I’m not entirely certain, but some amount of it would probably go to a charity such as Child’s Play. We’ve supported them in the past, and, I think we should really continue to support them as well. Thanks for your support, everyone! Keep it up! Let’s not allow this place to swipe any other people’s work!

[UPDATE 2:] Oooooh! Score! The incredible Kate and Alex, rebels from foggy ol’ Great Britain town, managed to snap a picture of the shirt hanging in the storefront of Edinburgh All Saint on Princes Street. Peep this! I’m completely surprised!

Thanks again, guys.

Here’s another photo, courtesy of Mikey!