Rhinestones, Hair Combs & Copycats

Another day, another infringement. Well, several of them actually. It really is never-ending y'all.

Fairy Wing Hair Combs from Hey Ricochet
A friend of mine came across these fairy wing hair combs on Instagram and recognized the design as my Titania fairy wings, which I created in 2007.

Fairy Wing Hair Combs page from the Hey Ricochet website showing a price of $28 with color options Pink, Lavender & Yellow. Described as responsibly made in China from cellulose acetate

Often when I catch people using my photos of this design or copying it, they argue how "I see that design everywhere, it's been around forever!" , or "it's all over Pinterest" as if that makes it okay, and my favorite, "you don't own all fairy wings!"
But you see, it's 'been around forever' because I made it that long ago and it was popular enough to go viral, but almost always without credit to me.

You can still see my old listing on my old website saved in the Internet Archive here, date and all.

They did remove 2 small veins, however, that doesn't make it okay either. There's this mythical magic percentage that people think they can change in a work that protects them legally, but it is a myth.

Substantial similarity is what a court would look for, and there is obvious substantial similarity here. Yes there's small differences, which may make it a derivative, but the copyright owner has the exclusive right to create derivatives of their work and any use by others would require a license or royalties.

I started small, as I usually do, and first sent a Cease & Desist to them directly on 8/26/24, asking for the listing and social media posts containing the infringing content to be removed within 48 hours.

Screenshot of emailed response from Hey Ricochet Inc. stating "We are working with counsel on a response to the claims put forth in the previously mentioned email and will respond in a reasonable time. " signed Andrea Stein and Cayce Matteoli

On August 29 I got a response saying "We are working with counsel on a response to the claims put forth in the previously mentioned email and will respond in a reasonable time. "
Yet they left all the content up and are still promoting it.

I then reported it to Shopify for removal, after which Hey Ricochet sent a counter notice even though Shopify still had not removed it by then, which means they're refusing to stop selling them.

That meant I had to escalate to legal action, and I filed a CCB claim, & sent a copy of that claim to Shopify.
Look, consequences!
There's the fairy wing hair comb listing on Hey Ricochet's site with a 'Page not found' 404 error.

Screenshot showing Hey Ricochet web listing for fairy wing combs with 404 'Page not found' error

I'm also waiting on Instagram to remove the posts.

But in Shopify's new removal notice they repeated that the other party may file a counter notice, which would allow Shopify to put the content back up after 10-14 days - even though Hey Ricochet had already filed a counter notice.
And they said they can't verify that the document of my filing would satisfy section 512(g)(2)(c) requirement of a court order to prevent the content from being re-listed.

I asked the CCB about this and their response was:
"If your claim is alleging infringement of material that you identified in a takedown notice to Shopify, and if you notified Shopify notice of the CCB proceeding before it restored that material, then the claim meets the requirements of section 512(g)(2)(c).  If that is the case, then it should suffice if you send Shopify a copy of the claim, and tell Shopify that section 1504(c)(1) of the Copyright Act provides that CCB infringement claims qualify under section 512(g)(2)(c)."

I forwarded that email to them. So let's keep that info handy in case any other platforms try to deny your CCB claim is sufficient!

They are also still selling these hair combs wholesale though, which I didn’t realize they were doing on a different website, Faire.

Screenshot of Hey Ricochet's wholesale listing for the fairy wing hair combs on Faire.com

If they’re selling wholesale, they must have produced quite a lot of them. I’ve also sent a removal notice to Faire and waiting for them to take action.

Hey Ricochet could have worked with me to come to some kind of agreement, instead of ending up with a dead web page when people look for these fairy hair combs they've been pumping up and apparently doing a big photo shoot to promote.
The CCB claim can be seen here: https://dockets.ccb.gov/claim/view/9644

Rhinestone iron-on from Heat Transfer Warehouse
I wish I could say that's the only infringement I've been dealing with, but there's another company that's been profiting off of my Teasel fairy wing design for a few years now.
I discovered that Heat Transfer Warehouse had been selling a rhinestone iron-on of my Teasel fairy wings design. Now, I'd been running into these rhinestone copies for a while now and every once in a while had to report them. Maybe this was the source?
I first sent a Cease & Desist letter on July 30th, which they ignored completely.

So I went ahead and reported the listing to their host, Big Cartel, who sent them a warning that it would be removed if they don't remove it themselves. They fortunately did remove it, but, I may go ahead and file a CCB claim because they've been making a profit off of my design and, continued to sell it after I sent the C&D. I think I should be getting at least a portion of those sales, they should have licensed the design from me if they wanted to use it.
Here's the rhinestone design with the actual photo of my Teasel wings that it looks like it was traced from overlayed on top with a transparency adjustment.

Image with fairy wing pattern in white dots representing rhinestones, with my original Teasel photo overlayed on it showing a match

This matches far too well to be a coincidence IMO. Even the wing in the foreground appears to be traced. Some changes were made to the bottom panels, which are simply copies of the upper panels in my original design, so again this is still substantially similar and a derivative.

I took a screenshot of the page while it was active, and according to the Internet Archive that page has been active since Sept. 2020. How many have been sold? How much should I have been paid in royalties?

Screenshot of Heat Transfer Warehouse's fairy wings rhinestone transfer listing while active

Since they removed the page themselves, they didn't end up with that embarrassing 'page not found' situation.

Copycat wing makers on Etsy from Ukraine
These next copycats have been more frustrating to deal with. Even though Etsy took them down when I reported them, one of them filed a counter notice, but since they're in Ukraine I can't sue and I can't even file a Misrepresentation Claim with the CCB because they only deal with entities in the US.

On July 16 I found 3 wing listings on Etsy that were copies of my Kira wings design by seller ReddoStore. Here's a screenshot of the listing for the purple wings:

Screenshot from ReddoStore's Etsy listing for purple fairy wings that copy the Kira fairy wings design, showing a woman wearing them from the back, sitting on a chair sideways

They were selling these in a few colors.  The design doesn't even really have any changes, it's absolutely copied. Here's a photo of me with those wings edited in - I made the overlays from photos of the actual wings.
Photo taken by Jordan Price.

Photo of a white woman with dark hair wearing giant purple Kira fairy wings, dark green corset, rainbow skirt and horned headdress

Near the end of August I discovered those same exact wings, but from a different seller who was also in Ukraine, OlenaOlenaStore.

Screenshot of listing from Etsy seller OlenaOlenaStore for purple wings that copy the Kira design, showing photo of a blond woman wearing them, back view

Same back brace & everything! I reported those too, and Etsy took them down. So far, no counter notice, but that doesn't mean they won't send one eventually. Unlike the time limit copyright owners have to send the service provider a court order to prevent the posts from going back up after the counter notice is sent, they don't have a time limit so they could very well send one at any time.

I don't think that's a fair system, that I have to show them proof of my design, but all the infringers have to do is sign a notice saying they have good faith belief that they didn't infringe.

I've had a lot of trouble with wing makers in Ukraine for some reason, these two aren't the only ones!

I've had to report infringements from this account, who still has posts up that copy my Kira design but Instagram won't remove the posts. Here she's using mini Kira wing copies without the veins to put onto a crown: https://www.instagram.com/p/Cuq-6O3ow-I/

And advertising it on Etsy: https://www.instagram.com/p/CuxS3P4IZ2v/

Another thing I noticed is they have the same back brace as ReddoStore & OlenaOlenaStore, you have to look closely at their photos because the butterfly is being worn on the inside against their backs so it's not as immediately noticeable.

Photo from EywaDeco's website showing woman with back turned wearing transparent pink cicada fairy wings

 Here's a better pic, you can see the butterfly behind the wings here

photo of dark haired woman wearing ReddoStore copy of Kira wings in dark pink, viewed from the back

I'm not sure if there's someone selling the back braces or if they're all buying wings pre-made and reselling, but it sure seems like reselling if 2 different unrelated sellers are selling the exact same product and that breaks Etsy's rules! I tried telling them this, but they don't seem to care. I tried reporting them for violating Etsy's rule about reselling pre-made products but nothing has changed.

I've even had to report TheWingsUA (their Instagram handle), aka WingsAndFlowerDesign on Etsy, for making wings using my Titania wings photo.

Screenshot of infringing fairy wings Etsy listing from WingsAndFlowerDesign, showing mannequin from the back, wings are printed with my edited Titania wings photo

That particular photo got used a LOT, and has also been made into temporary tattoos, all without permission or any money paid to me of course. Below is the original photo of mine that this version came from.

Photo of my light green iridescent Titania fairy wings with brown veins, shot from the side, with FancyFairy.com watermark

That particular photo got used a LOT, and has also been made into temporary tattoos, all without permission or any money paid to me of course. Below is the original photo of mine that this version came from.

Image from DeviantArt user MLauNeim or MaryNeim showing Titania wings photo edited to be purple, offered as clip art, titled 'Wings Butterfly'

She's unfortunately not in the US either, I forget now where she resides but I couldn't really do anything except report her posts.

But this WingsAndFlowerDesign company has been getting really popular with Americans because they're priced so cheap. Some of their designs are really pretty but... are they really their designs or are they stolen too?
Some seem like they might be made with AI, which, I'd rather have them do that than copy my photos or designs. But there's other wings in their shop that look very familiar to me, designs that have been around elsewhere and they may be using images or clip art they find online. And if most of what I see from someone is either copied from another artist, a nature design, or AI, that tells me they are lacking in design skills so they have to use designs that are already made.
They also seem very similar to the CrystalWingsUA Etsy store.

Thankfully they at least didn't send a counter notice... not yet anyway.

But another thing I never got from any of these companies?
An apology. An "I'm so sorry I used your design". 

There are many many more overseas copies than I can fit in here, but I'm working on getting them removed somehow.
In a couple weeks I have a virtual meeting with Senior Counsel for Enforcement from the Office of Policy and International Affairs at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to discuss the copyright issues that myself and so many other artists & designers are struggling with, especially with foreign sellers!

I'm not sure what will come of this, if it will lead to any actual changes, but I will update you here if it does!

I'm Being Relentlessly Harassed Over an Influencer's Copyright Removal

*Update at the bottom 9/14/22
I was determined to let this go and not speak out since the influencer in question, Haeli Hunt, is a smaller account than mine. I only go after the big fish, or people that are the public face of a big company, as mine has grown & it’s usually not worth it to bother.
But now she got her friend riahboflavin with over 225,000 followers, more than double my size, to target me on Instagram for her, the rules have now changed with this new power dynamic.
The defamation is not stopping even though I’ve had zero contact with Haeli for weeks and did my best to ignore this.
The situation is being misrepresented by them both, and false accusations that I ‘keep reporting’ Haeli’s posts when it was only her one video with the knockoff wings that got reported. Twice, since she was reckless enough to repost it after it was removed the first time without my permission.

I’m still going to ask everyone NOT to engage with either of these people. This is here solely to set the facts straight now that a much larger account got involved in targeting me.

I’m being falsely accused of ‘harassment’ and ‘bullying’ because I discovered Haeli was displaying knock-off copies of my Titania fairy wings she bought from a company in China in her Reels, and I tried to resolve the issue with her directly and amicably to protect my IP.


The specific design was copied exactly and I do have a copyright registration for my Titania fairy wings design or I would not have been able to file a CCB claim against Paris Hilton or SHEIN, contrary to her followers’ claims that I don’t. I wouldn’t bother otherwise, I don’t think I own ‘all fairy wings’, as their accusations claim but I do own this very specific design I created from scratch in 2007 that is not a design from nature. That’s why people say they’ve been ‘around forever’ because, you know, older artists actually exist.
I also do NOT require attribution on every photo of someone wearing my physical wings as the rumors say, only in certain contexts where everyone else is credited and excluding mine would implicate someone else made my work.
*Screenshots from Haeli’s & riahboflavin’s posts for the purpose of education, news reporting & clearing defamatory accusations, under Fair Use laws.
3 screenshots below.

1. She was a follower of mine already when she bought the knock-off wings, even though I post that design fairly often including speaking out about the theft of it.


2. I asked if she could explain in a post that the wings were illegally copied from mine, she said she would but never actually did it.
After a week at least of no response I asked if she could edit the captions of the existing posts to explain the knock-offs. It was ignored although she saw my message, and so a few days after I asked why she was ignoring my requests & said I didn’t want to report her, and I meant that. But her Reel was getting a lot of engagement and knock-offs of my design getting that attention is bad for my business if people think I made those poorer quality wings.
She got defensive and immediately blocked me. Entire convo below, 8 screenshots.


3. I started getting wild accusations on my posts that I ‘bully people who buy any other wings’ before I found she made a public post denying the wings were alike, targeting me for harassment before I reported her post.
She said she had no idea who I was, which also wasn’t true.
I reported her post at that point as it all now seemed willful & malicious.
I may not have bothered doing so if her followers had not started trolling my posts relentlessly.
6 screenshots below show a tiny sample of this.

4. She emailed me asking if I’d like to talk. I responded only once, said I was hesitant since she still had public posts up fueling harassment of me, while ironically accusing me of harassment. She responded that she’d remove the posts * if * I let her post the video with the knock-off wings.
I didn’t trust her, as she was still entertaining defamation of me in her post. Those posts should’ve been deleted or made private for me to believe she wanted real resolution.
I felt anything I said, anything I asked for her to specify in a new post would simply be twisted & used for more harassment if she didn’t want to tell people they were knock-offs. I did not respond. 2 screenshots below

5. She re-posted the same video that IG removed the first time without my permission, with a simple credit to me - while still having me blocked - with no mention of them being unauthorized copies as I asked for multiple times in our DMs.
So I reported the video again since communicating with her seemed impossible without a side of heavy drama. The simple credit made it seem as if those sub-par knock-offs were somehow official, which was not good for business. It was removed, again, by Instagram.

6. More posts by Haeli with more defamation and harassment from her friends / followers on all platforms. I made a few vague posts in my Stories without mentioning her name, ever, explaining that the trolls were due to an influencer who didn’t like that her infringing video was removed, that I never asked for credit but for an explanation that they were knock-offs. She later emails me denying she knew that’s what I wanted.

7. At that point I decide to share a few screenshots of our convo in my Insta Stories, showing the few times I specifically asked for an explanation, not credit or promotion, plus her email denying she knew that’s what I wanted, with her name completely censored.
Still wasn’t harassing or targeting her, still was protecting her identity since she’s a smaller account. I was hoping they’d burn themselves out and move on. 5 Screenshots below.

8. I have had no contact with Haeli or any of her friends since that one email response, I’ve been doing my best to ignore her and hoped it would die down.

For some unknown reason Haeli posted about me again yesterday on both platforms, dredging up old news, and again I was going to let it go and hope she got tired of talking about me. But today, her friend riahboflavin targeted me in her Stories to her 200K+ followers, more than twice the size of my account.
They are essentially doing all the things to me that they falsely accuse me of, now bullying and harassing me, a smaller creator, publicly by name complete with puking emojis.

Riahboflavin did include some screenshots of our conversation but excluded the one that shows the second time I said I wanted an explanation and that I did NOT expect promotion. Oh and, screenshot of Haeli’s public support of this larger account posting about me, aka Mariah.

The trolling comments I’ve gotten have been extensive, the defamation and accusations absolutely unhinged, many ableist insults calling me psychotic & crazy just for protecting my IP, and her friends even publicly admitted they’d be reporting me for everything from spam to harassment, none of it founded, and Haeli entertained all of this without correcting or shutting any of it down. I even had one of my posts, something shared from a photographer who used my overlays, reported falsely as soliciting sexual content even though it was simply a photo of a woman who was nude but had ALL her bits covered and I don’t doubt that may have come from Haeli’s crew. Meanwhile the only post of Haeli’s that got reported and removed was the one video she posted twice for infringement, and infringement is much harder to get removed than any other type of report. But I have all the proof plus the copyright registration, and Haeli would’ve gotten all that info when the report went thru, no matter how much she may want to convince people I don’t own my design.
2 screenshots below

The wedding photographer for the lesbian wedding posts that we shared was the first to turn off comments on those posts because they were leaving so many awful ones, which is especially crappy to post that garbage on photos of these womens’ special day when they had nothing to do with this. I eventually had to follow by turning off comments on both Meta platforms for more than a week just to make it stop.

There’s honestly too much of it to post it all here. And I wouldn’t have known about yesterday’s post at all if it weren’t for another of her friends sending me a nasty email yesterday morning out of the blue, because I stopped caring about whatever Haeli might be up to weeks ago. It’s a shame how much space I’m still taking up in her head after all this time with nothing to trigger it.

I’m going to end this with this one submission if it would stop this shit show:

Haeli * if * you and your friends call off the harassment for real & remove the defamatory posts, especially Mariah Lacy, you can go ahead and post the video of yourself in the janky knock-off wings if you want that so badly, now that your friend has brought so much attention to the fact that they’re knock-offs of mine. Leave me alone, and have your people do the same. I didn’t intend on making this public but you went and got a big account involved the same size as Chotronette, and forced a public clarification.
All you had to do was honor my simple request to explain that the wings were copies of mine & honor another content creator’s rights.
This public drama was your choice, and now it’s also your consequence. I hope this makes you happy.

*Update
Haeli emailed me, with an attempt to bargain, wanting me to also remove this post.

It’s not a fair bargain to me, and this is the response I sent her:

”Haeli, you're not completely understanding my offer so let me be clear.

I'm not removing my blog post. The harassment you've sent my way for roughly a month while I withheld your identity, revokes that privilege for you as the damage is done, especially after you got a large account involved to target me. It would not be a fair deal, I've posted a factual account of things to counter the defamation being spread. Yet even after seeing the blog post and my offer, you made yet another post falsely accusing me of twisting things, drumming up more hate & harassment. I got more overnight, I'll attach just two of the screenshots for you.
The most important thing I need from you is to make new posts on any platform you posted about me negatively, and start with asking your followers to stop harassing me.
No snark, no sarcasm, no insults misrepresenting what happened or accusations, no complaining about me or it doesn't count.
That must be the sole focus of the posts, not an edit or addendum at the end.
No entertaining falsehoods anymore in the comments or egging on the hate either, that would be counterproductive. 
I've explicitly asked my followers not to engage with you or your friends without you having to ask me to do that from the start. The very few I’ve seen that ignored that and interacted with you in your posts were civil in their attempts to clarify copyright law and other facts about the situation.
I've been more than patient.

You and Mariah need to also:
• Admit I do hold the copyright for that specific wing design as it's not from nature
• Admit the designs are in fact the same, because color variations, size and materials aren't considered transformative changes.
• Admit I have not been harassing you, I had no contact with you since the one response to your email weeks ago, and that I only reported the one video AFTER people started harassing me on your behalf, and it was reported twice only because you decided to post it again without my permission after the first removal.

Also remove your public posts about me.
Then you can post your content with those specific wings as long as they are not monetized, sponsored or in collaboration with brands. This is non-negotiable and I don't want any further requests from you.
Read this all carefully so you can't say you didn't know what I want again, if you violate any part of this agreement we have no deal. If this doesn't work for you, then let this be our last interaction. Since the harassment has continued, my offer ends tomorrow, Sept. 15 at 12pm Pacific. Further harmful actions from you to stir drama in the meantime may also revoke this offer.”
~

The harassing screenshots I sent her are below, 2 screenshots

I made one more email to clarify something that I didn’t want to get mixed up due to terminology just now, saying this:
”One last thing to clarify further just in case you're not clear on what I mean by making the posts to call off the harassment:
They should be a post in your main feed on FB & Instagram since that's the format the posts about me were in, and as for Mariah she can either make a Story post and keep it in her profile Highlight or make one in her main feed. They need to be permanent type posts rather than solely temporary Stories.”

These are very simple actions that can get her the permission she wants, and end the drama and harassment. Whether she’ll accept it, I don’t know but I’ll give her the benefit of the doubt this one last time.

*Update 4:52pm 9/14/22
She emailed with a response, she’s not accepting my offer. So be it.

Apparently Haeli now pinned a newer post in her main Instagram feed about me, very much defamation.
Again, stating I wanted her to link to my wings as if looking for promotion, and that I asked for a normal credit, that’s not what I asked for at all as our DMs made clear.
She’s falsely misrepresenting it as if she had made the post she said she’d make explaining the situation when she never did it, as if I never gave her a chance to correct things and never explained what I wanted.

In addition, I was falsely accused by her followers of ‘ripping off’ another wing maker in the comments and even though the wing maker herself responded to tell them they’re absolutely wrong, Haeli deleted her very polite comments.
She watched the accusation get debunked in real time, and removed it in order to allow the accusations to stay. I think that says a lot about the kind of person we’re dealing with here.
Unfortunately due to this maker’s safety concerns she’s afraid of being targeted by Haeli’s people, understandably, so I’m obscuring her name here. But it’s obvious from the comments that hers are missing. 3 screenshots below showing the accusations and the now missing comments made by the wing maker.

The truth is, I’m friends with the majority of iridescent wing makers out there and they have been incredibly supportive to me behind the scenes during all this, and can’t believe how ridiculous this has been. Some were brave enough to stand up for me in the comments - all extremely politely - but their comments get deleted and some even got blocked.
I want to thank each and every one of you who has been offering me moral support in private and public, I greatly appreciate you all.

Below are just a couple of the times she’s allowed or even encouraged lies about my ownership of the design or that I think I own ‘ALL’ fairy wing designs, and there are many more instances of this on all her posts including the one from this week. It’s exactly why those retractions from her would be needed with any request to her followers to leave me alone.
I’ve accepted that she won’t be doing the right thing.



The Copyright Claims Board Is Finally Here!

*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.

The Disco Lemonade Dilemma

Well here we are. I wasn’t going to speak on this publicly before but recent events made me feel it necessary.

First I want to stress, I want NO HARASSMENT OF ANYONE ON MY BEHALF! You’ll see why I had to stress this.

I want to first share my own experience with the entity owned by Emily Detweiler in the USA, Disco Lemonade Inc and discolemonade.co website.

I had a copyright dispute with Emily when she got and displayed photos of a tattoo on her back that was obviously copied from my Titania Fairy Wings design. This is a design she purchased digital overlays of from me and has used multiple times so I assumed it was intentional.
I commented about the likeness and sent her a DM asking if she could please credit me as the source, as in the comments she was already insisting they aren’t the same design and her followers were attacking me in the comments. Screenshots below are all shown here under copyright Fair Use law section 107, for the purpose of news reporting, public commentary & critique regarding a popular entity and copyright dispute in order to factually verify events.
Keep in mind as well how the design distorts with movement, and that copyright law does not allow for derivative works by third parties unless the original artist gives permission. Yes, drawings / paintings / tattoos that copy a photo, even if not 100% exact, are violating as outlined on the copyright.gov website here: https://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-fairuse.html?fbclid=IwAR3Y4hvs9XD9jas_4B-XbXZ_7NcNVNcWWtmHOHjaX1DFdRHg_OZSendavZg
These rules are also outlined in Circular 14 and Circular 21.

My screenshots below where she initially refused to credit me as she was trying to convince me they weren’t the same because they didn’t line up exactly in Photoshop, but that’s not a factor to prove it’s not infringement because it’s still copied from my design obviously. Only the original artist has the right to create derivatives from their work. You can see - and purchase, if you’d like - my Titania wing overlays here but this does not include permission to turn them into a tattoo: https://fancy-fairy-wings-things.myshopify.com/products/titania-fairy-wings-transparency-stock-png-files

I’ll almost always say yes when I’m asked if someone can get a tattoo done based on my designs, as long as I’m credited when it’s posted to show it off on social media and as long as the tattoo shop does not make it a part of their collection of available tattoos offered to people.

In the DMs above we are discussing my upset about her liking some of those toxic comments. You can see the comments in question below.
Note that the same day I saw her post showing her tattoo copied from my wings, I had been trying to help her report infringements of her photos by a scam company that was using her photos to sell knockoff product based on her designs and she still currently speaks out about this issue as Shein has now stolen her photos for selling knockoff clothing. That made this situation sting even more.

The response from her tattoo artist, David Enth, after I sent him the C&D letter asking him to stop offering that tattoo and asking for either credit or removal from his account, and my response informing him about the copyright rules he should be following. He sent me the photo he got from Pinterest that he based the design on, which was of course my own from my old website.

I never heard back from David after this. Apparently he did add more to the tattoo, but nothing that changed the vein structure which is the core of my copyright registration for the design. It’s not enough to be transformative or to avoid violating my copyright. The veins should’ve been covered or changed.

Emily / Lem continues to post a lot of photos of her back with her hair pulled forward to show off the design, but that first photo is the only one that she begrudgingly credited. And when people ask where it’s from, she neglects to mention me, so I’m not entirely happy about it and it doesn’t feel fully resolved to me. Especially since she never said anything publicly to clarify the situation or corrected the people insulting me. However, I’d been dealing with too much to continue trying to get her to resolve things further and did not want to deal with her ‘army’ that appears to turn vicious toward people so I stopped following her and tried to let it go.

I also have a very hard time believing that Emily didn’t know that was my Titania design, considering she bought and used those overlays plenty of times. How is someone an artist or designer of any type and not able to recognize the very design they bought a license for and used multiple times? Below are screenshots of her use of my overlays.

The trademark dispute

That’s where my own story ends, or at least the bulk of it.
In February, I learned Emily’s Facebook and Instagram accounts were removed by a company with the same name in another country, who owns a trademark for the name in that region. The owner of the trademark, also posted Story Highlights on her Instagram with screenshots from other women who claimed they had been infringed, mistreated, or harassed by Emily and / or her followers.

She also posted screenshots of bullying and threats from Emily’s followers towards herself and her 13 year old daughter, which is really upsetting. I am not going to share her content here as it’s already public.
Admittedly I felt a little less alone knowing I wasn’t the only one who had a negative experience with her, and I sent Jane (not her real name for privacy purposes) a short summary of my own experience to offer moral support. She then asked if she could share my message, without my name and I told her she could. Since people may figure out I’m fairy #5 though, I felt at this point I needed to be clear about my stance on this.

I am not involved in her GoFundMe in any way and do not endorse her current approach. I disagree with many of the assumptions made regarding Emily’s income, and other details. I was open with her about my concerns but they were blown off.
She also had told me no when I asked her specifically if Emily never responded to her at any point in all of this, but her own screenshots posted in her archives showed conversations between them with Emily offering to change her business name and url, as well as asking how much they could pay to buy the mark. There was also a private phone number displayed which is considered doxxing, but has since been removed, as she’s said that was not intentional.
The dishonesty about contact between them is a deal breaker for me, as it is with anyone.

The short of it is, I’m not really pleased with how Emily dealt with my copyright issue with her, but I’m also not pleased with some of the ways Jane is approaching this issue.

I’ve only spoken with one of the other ‘fairies’ who’ve had bad experiences with Emily, one who says they were to collaborate on a design, only to have Emily post the design later without crediting her and cutting ties. I can’t verify the other women’s stories for you here, I can only show you my own. Perhaps the other women out there who allegedly share this type of experience with Emily will also feel a bit less alone. Maybe they’ll even come forward with their experiences.

As for who deserves to own the trademark? I have no idea honestly. It seems like a grey area and I’m not going to go over all the details of international trademark law here, but I did see public records that Emily applied for trademark registration for the names Fairy Armor and Disco Lemonade in the US, stopped selling in the trademark owner’s country under Disco Lemonade, and made a new website under the Fairy Armor name to sell her products in that country. I’m not as familiar with trademark law as with copyright, so I’m not going to judge whether or not that is enough to make it legal as their urls are indeed very alike and that might be disputable. That’s now between the two of them to figure out.
Publicly telling the ‘fairy army’ to cease harassing Jane and her family would be a good move as well, and I’ve told Emily she should be doing at least that rather than remaining silent.

I wish both women well. My only aim with this entry is to tell the truth of my experience with these entities.
If anyone carries out any harassment or bullying in my name, I will report them myself if possible and block them on social media. No matter which side they’re on, there’s no excuse for threats against someone’s family, attacks on one’s appearance or anything else about their identity. You’re welcome to share my story on your own accounts.

Paris Hilton Titania Fairy Wings Infringement #3!

*Update: As of February 2023, the legal issue between Paris Hilton and myself has been privately resolved

I’m not kidding. There’s another one. AND it’s the same design again.

This is actually infringement #1 technically, since it was posted on Twitter in 2019 it’s the earliest one but I didn’t know about it until now.

3 times in less than 3 years Paris has posted images infringing on my Titania Fairy Wings design and she’s refused to remove the 2nd one so I’m not even going to bother sending notice for this one until I can file a claim in the soon-to-open Copyright Claims Board tribunal.

Another aspect of her infringement is that it could be fueling brand confusion between another wing maker’s work and mine because for the last couple years she’s been making fairy wings in the same style as mine for Paris. In just the last year I’ve had at least 6 different instances of people confusing her work for mine and vice-versa.
This doesn’t happen with other wing makers with this frequency and one of those was on my Instagram post about the infringement! Someone was commenting about how those wings weren’t even mine, they named the other wing maker as the author. The wing maker in question also responded to correct them and tell them they were indeed my design. I asked her if she would kindly bring this up to Paris herself, now that she’s definitely aware of the issue but I never got a response to that. She’s still continued to work with her.

It’s also someone who had spread a rumor about me that I attacked them in a Facebook group, which makes this even more troubling for me. When confronted, she said I posted something about being the original iridescent fairy wings in a post and that it was an attack targeted at her.
The Original Iridescent Fairy Wings is my website tagline because I am literally the 1st person I know of who put iridescent film wings on the market in 2003.
My very first set of iridescent wings I made for myself were made in the 1900’s y’all.
Late 1990’s, but you get the point.
That tagline would show up in the small preview thumbnail of my website link, which I had posted in an ‘introduce yourself’ thread in the fairy group.
I don’t think I’m buying that she genuinely believed I was targeting her, it’s quite a reach.
She knew iridescent fairy wings, especially with cut metal frames, were first brought to market by myself, which is why she asked for my blessing to make cut plastic veined wings in the past, and I gave it.
I don’t know if the brand confusion or infringements are willful but I’ve never had so many repeat infringements by the same large corporate entity. It’s irresponsible at least.
I’ve been documenting all those instances and will provide that as evidence when the hearing happens in case they find it relevant.

You can find the 1st infringement blog post here: https://www.fancyfairy.com/news/2020/9/17/infringement-is-not-hot-paris-hilton

The 2nd one is here: https://www.fancyfairy.com/news/2020/12/12/thats-not-hot-paris-part-2-copyright-hullabaloo

Copyright Incident That Turned Into a Positive with Bretman Rock

Another day, another comment tag on an Instagram post that used my wing image without permission.
I sighed, made a quick Instagram Story about it asking to get Bret’s attention and went to bed. It already had over 1 million likes by the time I discovered it and I found out quickly a fan had made the edit so he was probably unaware.
I assumed it was probably from PicsArt Stickers, where so much of my IP is distributed illegally by users who don’t care or don’t know better on a site that seems to almost encourage theft.

But this young gender fluid, blue check mark celebrity actually responded to my DMs and - shocker - was completely apologetic and supportive!

He asked what he could do to help, was both humble and more supportive than I EVER would have expected someone of his stature to be to me, an independent non-celebrity artist making fairy wings.
I mean seriously, look at just 2 screenshots of his messages to me below.
This kind of integrity and compassion from anyone considered rich & famous is rare, folks. It just is, at least in my experience, having had enough IP incidents with some of them.

As a follower pointed out, it is a little sad that this kind response is so shocking to us, because why isn’t this kind of decency the standard? I’ve come to expect very little of people because so very many times I ask for credit or removal but I am lashed out at & made out to somehow be the bad guy, I get called ‘rude’ just for asking for my rights and art to be respected. Honestly, I’ve mostly given up even trying anymore unless it’s something really big because the worst of them have left me so drained.

Having someone like this in my corner though, a stranger who could just as easily ignored me like most do, stand up for me and support me in this way has given me some hope.
In this case, I’m actually seeing this as a blessing in disguise. I discovered a rare gem of a genuine person who somehow remains humble even after wealth and fame has carried him up to star stature.
Maybe it’s because he’s not a cis white male but rather an immigrant who was not born with a silver spoon in his mouth and had to work hard to get where he is. Either way, I’m now glad to know him and am a new fan.
Bretman (da baddest) Rock is a genuine bad-ass

Here we go again with another celebrity infringement of my work

A follower alerted me to my ripped off Kira wings image showing up in Kendall Jenner's Instagram Stories today.

Celebs, please stop sharing edits from anonymous fans & when you're notified it's infringement, REMOVE IT. Doesn't matter if you made it or not, you're accountable.

Yes I sent everyone with an email contact a DMCA including Instagram. Speaking of uber wealthy white celebrities, Paris Hilton is still ignoring my notices btw. Before you say it, no I'm not flattered at all, I don't want to collab with either family for many reasons.

I don't currently or in the future give this family or Paris permission to use or display my work, it needs to come down now. I would appreciate a public correction but I know not to hold my breath for accountability that way.

This harms my market, as I sell legit digital overlays of this same design directly to the public, but even those have a LIMITED license for use - and the number of followers she has would violate those terms, as well as the fact they showed up with zero credit to me.
I have no record of them being purchased by any of the people that posted it.

My full terms are included in the description of my listings as you can see here: https://fancy-fairy-wings-things.myshopify.com/products/kira-fairy-wings-transparency-stock-png-files

This was likely pulled from my old Etsy listing here: https://www.etsy.com/listing/165305210/giant-kira-fairy-wings-in-your-custom?show_sold_out_detail=1&ref=nla_listing_details

If you want to help, please don’t flood her posts with comments because all that seems to do is increase her traffic and they may ignore them.
Instead, please share this blog post. Unfollow people who infringe on artists and their supporters who look the other way.