The artisan caps cottage industry is filled with blatant ripoffs from Mattel, Hasbro, Marvel and Disney to begin with: Skeletor, Optimus Prime, Iron Man, Darth Vader...
Seem like the rule is "steal from anyone you want, just don't steal from us".
Really? Interesting. Aside from the optimus cap which I havent made in years, which of my designs are a 'blatant ripoff' of anything? V2 BroBot is a copyrighted original design.
If you're calling something Skeletor, then that includes everything minus the head. Because the grim reaper has been around many, many years before Skeletor. I can't speak for other
artisans, but from what I have seen, most of them have their own take on a particular character, and are not directly taking from anything. In the case of k3kc, he is directly taking a product
and making exact duplicates. He doesn't seem to have the ability to create anything original, and his duplicates quality leave much to be desired.
Thank you for the calm response.
First, I'm in no way condoning what K3KC did, that verbatim copying and completely wrong.
And second I apologize about the Skeletor keycap, you're right, on a closer look it's hard to argue the Skeletor design wasn't quite generic to begin with - it made the skull + hood an icon, but too few distinguishing features to set it apart from other "grime reaper" designs, esp. without the body.
My comment is not specifically toward you, but more toward the cottage industry of artisan caps itself.
Let's face it, there's this big legal grey area right now. Yes, those big companies are not making keycaps, but it's pretty obvious that many of those designs infringes upon their copyright.
Are faceless corporations free for the taking compared to hard working individuals such as you?
Now, that's the moral question.
Legally, now that you have brought legal actions into this industry full of grey areas, do you think it will mean that makers will start to cover their own behind in order to protect themselves?
It very much seems like the first stone in a glass house.
