C'est un rip-off ;(
Pop along to this site and scroll down to admire the many colour options for a “traditional design” being sold. Except that it’s my Ali’s Dish #2. If you are able, please leave a comment to this effect! Update. They claim they thought the design was traditional. I suggested a royalty and asked for creator […]
Inspiration or litigation?
Jennifer Linderman contacted me on FB with a question – I thought I’d share this and my answer, in the best Listeriine tradition! Hi Nick! I have an Origami copyright/design question. Last year when we had our Christmas Origami design competition I designed an model. Am I considered the original designer of this model and […]
Lang’s origami law-suit
It had to happen – so many origami artists are being ripped off but nobody was (or, to be truthful, financially able) prepared to put their neck on the line to protect them in the courts. Robert Lang has done this, on behalf of himself and Manuel Sirgo Alvarez, Noboru Miyajima, Nicola Bandoni, Toshikazu Kawasaki […]
I shared it on the grapevine
When questioned about the morality of producing and exchanging illegal ori-e-books, a standard answer is, well, many classic books are long out of print and so hard to find. It’s easy to see this as a justification, except that the whole perspective is skewed by the prevalence of file-sharing and the common belief that “if […]
Anarchy in Origami?
Browsing through Saj Kahn’s origami forum I’ve noticed a growing trend that I think of as “origami anarchists”. The basic tenet seems to be that all origami should be free and that creators don’t have the right to place any restrictions on how their work is used. This attitude causes a lot of grief to […]
Origami Authors and Creators
I have many dealings with advertising agencies, who in the main have no conception of how origami is created or the proper way to use it in their campaigns. Thus it is that there have been an increasing threat of court cases and legal exchanges over origami. A small number of people who were particularly […]
Origami Bible : Ashley Wood
Search Press (Quarto) Also sold as “the Origami Artists Bible”, this is a classic example of repackaging at its worst. Every single model within has been published before by Quarto and has simply been redrawn. Some of the models are credited to the creators, but many are not (Brill, Jackson etc). Worse than that, some […]
World’s Best Origami
My new book will be released soon, but I’ve already identified an error, which is depressing. The design included under the title “curly box”, which I thought was traditional, turns out to be the “flower box”, by Fumio Inoue. I found this on three sites listed as traditional and asked a usually reliable source, who […]
A Cool t-shirt!
I recently spotted this t-shirt featuring Dave Venables’ immortal and majestic duck. There’s a whole swathe of similar merchandise on this site, all, I’m fairly certain, without Dave’s permission. It’s depressing how some people will do anything for a dollar. Richly ironic as well, this is the only original design Dave has ever created!
t-shirt rip-off
I found a site selling t-shirts with two of my designs on. They’d simply taken the diagrams from my site and started selling them! I had a protracted e-mail exchange with the culprit, who initially claimed they were his own designs! Eventually he ‘fessed up and to be fair, removed them from the site. You […]