Another Year, Another Halloween Artist Ripped Off By Grandin Road

Haunter Ken Meade brought this to my attention. It really frosts me that Grandin Road does this year after year, and never suffer the consequences any of us "ordinary" folks would suffer for making money off another person's work. For crying out loud, why don't they just hire a couple of people to do these designs for them and pay them for their work?

Last year, they stole William Bezek's skeleton dolls, without even bothering to change any of the details. The year before, they stole Grim's Cloaked Ghost design. Pumpkinrot did a post on both of these outrages.

And what does Grandin Road do? Threaten the wronged party with a lawsuit if they don't take down the posts exposing Grandin Road's blatant thievery.

Spread the word again, kids. Not that they'll stop ripping us off, but more people should know about this. Feel free to spread the above graphic around. And post on their Facebook page. Just use polite language, please.

Grandin Theft-Again!

I only have a couple of minutes to pass this on, but I think it's worth doing.

Last year, Grandin Road released a cloaked ghost design based on Grim's cloaked ghost:

Grim's Ghost

Grandin Road's offering

 This year, they've stolen William Bezek's Dead Dolls:

Bezek's Dolls, which were used for the faces

These Bezek dolls were used for the clothing

Grandin Road's dolls

At even the most casual of glances, one can see they are copies of Bezek's work.

Bezek wrote a blog post about the theft, which he was later ordered to remove by Grandin Road-most probably by their legal department. You can read more details over at Pumpkinrot's blog, where Bezek, himself, made a brief comment.

I went to Grandin Road's Facebook page and privately messaged them a polite but firmly worded message of disappointment, accompanied by the usual futile "I'll not be purchasing from YOU PEOPLE this year, or any year, until you make restitution!"

I'm certain they'll giggle as they hit the "delete" key and wander down the hall to roll in all the money they're pulling in from ripping off artists' work. 

We all know they won't, and that they'll continue to rip off our work (by "our," I mean the Hallowe'en community at large) because they can afford to pay their lawyers to stall long enough for the opposition to run out of money. (My divorce lawyer cost me $300 an hour, and I didn't even fight for anything. I can't imagine how much it would cost to actively fight a copyright suit!)

If I were sure that Bezek would not suffer serious repercussions, I would encourage everyone to bomb their Facebook page with politely worded expressions of disappointment. After all, a corporation's image is important in this economy, is it not?

But there is a possibility they could sue him for that, and I'd be very upset if I caused that kind of grief for him. 

Thoughts?

As an aside, Spirit Halloween, we suspect, has done the same thing to Hauntcast. They were a sponsor of the show for a season, and right after they sponsored us, this product came out:

Yes, that's our tag line.

And now, they have a "Hanging Faceless Specter", which they undoubtedly got from the same manufacturer as Grandin Road's ripoff.

Deplorable.