BCBusiness

16 BCBusiness JUNE 2016 American Eagle Out•tters. There was the starlit sphere printed on a T-shirt; they bought it for $29.95. When Nizam took a close look at it, he found the image had been mirror-re˜ected and rotated 180 degrees, but sev- eral of the light patterns aligned. "The thing I •nd frustrating is that for all the work you do to develop something and create depth, someone can just walk to the front of the line and say, 'Great, look what I found.'" The cavalier use of the image, and its mass production, concerns Shane O'Brien, one of the owners of Gallery Jones. A print such as Drill Holes, sold in a limited edition of •ve, has value because of its specialness. "I think if somebody had purchased James's work, and then was walk- ing by American Eagle Out•tters, they would say, 'What the hell— that's the same thing I have on my living room wall that I bought from Gallery Jones for $10,000.' That would really detrimentally aœect the market, my credibility and James's credibility." But after considering the cost of •ghting a large American company, both O'Brien and Nizam decided against legal action. Despite the seemingly long odds, one Vancouver lawyer says that such copyright battles aren't necessarily futile—and in fact, the same digital forces that trans- ported Nizam's image around the world can also act to protect his artistic ownership rights. Clint Lee, an intellectual property lawyer at Nexus Law Group LLP, recently represented Granted Clothing, a Richmond company that designs and sells high-quality hand-knitted wool sweaters inspired by those of the Cowichan people. In January 2015, Granted owners discovered, through pictures on Instagram, that another U.S. retailer, Forever 21, was selling two sweaters almost identical to their designs. The story got extensive play in print, D espite moving halfway around the world, the former Queen of Chilliwack is the same old boat, for the most part. Her hull has been painted black—better suited to the warm, corrosive waters of the South Paci•c. The cafeteria has swapped the clam chow- der for chicken curry. And a 30-foot-long awning now covers the outer decks from occasional tropical downpours. But the queen is now a princess—re-christened Lomaiviti Princess II by her new owner, George Goundar, after his purchase of the ship last Septem- ber. Goundar is a former B.C. resident and senior manager at BC Ferries, where he spent two decades before returning to his native Fiji to retire in 2011. He has purchased two ships from BC Ferries to date (the other, the Queen of Prince Rupert, was bought in 2011), sailing them for 17 days across choppy seas to the South Paci•c. The •ve-year plan is to buy four to six more boats and grow his 200-employee Fijian ferry company, Goun- dar Shipping, by another 150 employees by 2019. The son of a ship captain, Goundar spent his childhood hauling bags of coconuts onto his father's 50-foot passenger- only ferry. In 1985 he migrated to Canada, the •rst of a wave of some 12,000 Fijian migrants who found safe harbour in Vancouver. After working odd jobs as a gas station attendant, a grocery stocker and a bouncer, Goundar enrolled in maritime broadcast and online—and within months, Lee reached a settle- ment with the clothing giant. While the terms of the deal are con•dential, Lee says that large fashion companies are motivated to settle copyright disputes now because of the eœects of social media. "Any negative publicity can spiral out of control," he says. "These clothing companies don't want bad PR. They take a great deal of pride in bringing products to market that are, in their minds, unique—and their brand image is very important to them. So when they're faced with a legitimate copyright infringement concern, they're going to look at that very seriously." Lee advises his clients to pro- tect digital images of their work with watermarks (a logo with a © for copyright, for example, or the artist's name)—which, at the very least, breaks the popular percep- tion that anything posted on the Internet is free. Emily Danchuk is an attorney in Portland, Maine, who has rep- resented more than 75 artists and designers, including Canadians, in copyright suits. She agrees that the scales have tipped in favour of creators; she works on contin- gency, and most of her cases have settled out of court. While in most countries copyright automati- cally belongs to the creator of a work, she says there are bene•ts to registering a work with the U.S. Copyright O©ce (for US$35 per work), as those cases tend to result in higher settlements. One of her clients, having registered copyright, has collected more than $100,000 in settlement in two separate legal matters. "I really see protecting copy- right and intellectual property as part of the necessary business model for small design compa- nies or individual artists," she says. "Art is like the backbone of every society, and so to say, 'Oh, I can just rip this artist oœ,' it really takes away from everything art means." Long Live the Queen Past-their-prime B.C. ferries find new beginnings in the sunny South Pacific by Jacob Parry T r a n s p o r t a t i o n You Be the Judge When Vancouver artist Jeff Depner saw pictures of U.K. fashion designer Preen's 2014 spring col- lection in Vogue magazine, he was suspicious. On his computer screen, he superimposed an image of the graphic pattern on the fabric onto an image of his work, Recongured Grid Painting No. 1. "Anybody can see it's identical," he says. "I didn't invent chevron, by any means, but the composition and for the most part the colours are the same." When contacted by Shane O'Brien of Gallery Jones, Depner's agent, Preen's creative director Justin Thornton responded that he had used par- quet –oors and patchwork quilts as inspiration for the collection, and Miami-inspired colours. "I can assure you we did not use any of Mr. Depner's art work in our prints."

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