If you didn’t see it, in the footer of the site is a statement about not having any copyright notices in this site. It may sound crazy, but my view is that copyrights generally hinder creativity. I’m not promoting stealing of any sort as the people who create need to be credited for their work and the people I create work for most likely don’t want their work stolen either. My apprehension towards copyrights is that I don’t care for the fact that copyright law limits the usage of things other people have created and/or does not allow other people to expand the usage of those ideas to further the concept well beyond what the copyright holder is doing with it.

Before I go any further, this is my current list of thoughts regarding creativity.

1. Created things should be used to better people, not to solely better the person that created it.
2. Created things should be credited to those that created them, but the life of those things are properly fostered by those that have access to it.
3. Protecting art stifles it and prevents new art from being created via expansion or variation.
4. Creativity should be freed, not stifled by man-made limitations.
5. What you create belongs to those you create it for.
6. Don’t intentionally misrepresent your work as belonging to the original creator.
7. Credit others where credit is due.
8. If someone is asking for money from the sale of something they’ve created then you should buy it from them.
9. Don’t overestimate the worth of something you’ve created.
10. The price of something does not equate to its true value.

OF MUSIC AND MOSAICS

I’ve had a few instances where copyrights have hindered my own ability to create variations of art. At one point in life I was fairly involved in creating music remixes. Originally starting using tracker software on the Commodore Amiga, I advanced to the PC using Sonic Foundry’s Acid Pro software. I created a few songs and made a remix or two from samples I had, but I felt that I had the ability to create a decent remix of a bigger artist.

I made contact with one artist’s manager and inquired about getting permission to create a remix of some of their music. The response I received was positive from the manager, as they would love to have remixes made but the problem was that the artist didn’t own their own music anymore and in order to get the proper permissions I would also need to secure the approval and rights from BMG and EMI. I would have gone forward with talking to both companies but the manager stated that when the artist wanted to create remixes of their own music that it took them over a year to get permission and proper rights from both entities. Seeing as what I wanted to do was more out of fun and enjoyment to be given directly to the artist and to not have any personal monetary gain for myself I decided that the process would have been more trouble than it was worth.

The most obvious question surrounding this is “what did you think was going to happen?” Prior to this occurring I had worked with a local artist and created a remix of one of their songs and gave another music-only song to a different band with full permission to write the lyrics to it if they wanted as they had asked if they could. In both instances, there weren’t any issues regarding permissions because the first band owned their music as did I with the song I gave away. Even if copyrights had been assigned to both songs neither I nor the other band would have had any issues surrounding the remix or the other band adding lyrics and performing it onstage.

The next bump with copyright came indirectly from Robert Silvers who owns the company Runaway Technology, Inc. that makes photo mosaics. On October 15, 1997, the book Photomosaics was released which contained a selection of the mosaics that Runaway Technology had created. The book was wildly popular and spawned a new type of art form. Well, at least it would have if it wasn’t for one important aspect. The photo mosaic style was patented and copyrighted by Robert Silvers.

Darth Vader mosaic by ~cozmicone on deviantART

When the company Runaway Technology first started, the footer of their website laid out the scope of their product.

“PhotomosaicT is a trademark of Runaway Technology. The Photomosaics software and the Photomosaic “look and feel” are protected by the patent, copyright, and other intellectual property laws of the United States and other major countries. We protect these rights vigilantly.”

Note the specific verbiage concerning software and the “look and feel” of the mosaics. As time progressed, the verbiage eventually changed and omited mention of the software specifically and became “The Photomosaic process is patented (US Patent No. 6,137,498).” Then on March 16, 2006 the verbiage “look and feel” was removed entirely from their site. The “process” of creating mosaics still indirectly refers to the specific software that Robert Silvers developed but the reason why the “look and feel” was removed from the site is a result of the Public Patent Foundation’s lawsuit against Robert Silver’s original patent.

The lawsuit brought to the Patent Office’s attention that identical photo mosaic imagery had been created by other people prior to Robert Silver’s claims that he created the photo mosaic style. The result of this lawsuit was that the Patent Office rejected the majority of his copyright, thus the reason why “look and feel” had to be removed from the Runaway Technology website.

This hasn’t stopped Mr. Silvers from having an image on his site that states he is the “inventor of the Photomosaic Process and Original Artist,” which is a completely false statement, but at least he’s no longer tracking down every company and individual that has released a program that makes photo-based mosaics.

Alyx and Dog mosaic by ~cozmicone on deviantART

In 2001, I started making image mosaics using a plug-in for the software The Gimp that had been written by someone unconnected to Robert Silvers. The plug-in worked great and I e-mailed the author of the plug-in to let him know how great the plug-in was. He was pleased with my results and shared my view regarding the look and feel statement. A few years later, the page for the mosaic plug-in was taken down with a message from the author stating that Robert Silvers sent him a cease and desist letter stating that the plug-in was infringing on his patent.

This isn’t the first time that Robert Silvers caused problems for other businesses. After seeing the plug-in page go down, I did some internet searching and found another business that also made the same type of mosaics. I inquired of the owner how he was able to do so with Robert Silvers having the rights to the process and the look and feel. The response I received back was that Robert Silvers would periodically pursue legal action against him claiming the same thing that resulted in the take-down of the plug-in page. He told me that he was growing weary of the having to go to court over the matter as it takes time away from his business and it was growing expensive. On the positive side, Robert Silvers was continually unable to prove that the other businesses’ process of creating mosaics infringed on his patent, something that he was specifically told in his proceedings, therefore the business was able to continue doing business making image mosaics.

“But you said that Robert Silvers had a patent on the process for making mosaics, not a copyright. Therefore your claim of copyrights hindering creativity doesn’t apply.” It actually still does. The process of making candy, specifically chocolate, is something that many companies have patented. If not the way they make their chocolate via a machinery process, then by the proportions of each ingredient used in their product. Fortunately, this doesn’t stop other people and businesses from making chocolate. Moreover, this is what I’m referring to with the photo mosaics.

I don’t deny that Robert Silvers has a patent on his software he created which is used in his creation of photo mosaics. It’s the active pursuit to crush anyone else that also wants to produce photo mosaics that’s the issue. The other companies weren’t purposely attempting to deceive anyone about who they were, they were simply trying to place applications in the hands of others that would allow them to create mosaics as well.

GLaDOS by ~cozmicone on deviantART

The point of these two stories, particularly the mosaic story, is how the concept of ownership of an idea was crushing the ability of others to create what is essentially art. The statement of the “look and feel” of mosaics rubbed me the wrong way from the first day I read it. A mosaic made of pictures is an art style. How exactly do you copyright an art style? All I can tell is that greed is what motivated Robert Silvers from allowing other people the ability to move forward with creating mosaics. He may have a very specific way of creating his mosaics, but money is the only reason I can think of why you wouldn’t want to share that technology with others.

If you’re wondering what I have against making money then let me say that I don’t have anything against it. Monkeylogic design is my business and while I do make money from the work I do, the business side of things is not why I’m in business and is the point of this post. In the case of the mosaics I was creating, I had figured out a way to easily create a huge library of images and at the same time came up with a concept that uses mosaics as a base and then builds on it to create a new variation of mosaics. My problem was that at the time I couldn’t move forward with either method as I would run the risk of receiving my own cease and desist letter and having to halt work that represented a huge time commitment.

Robert Silver’s insistence on protecting his technology was not only hindering other people from creating mosaics but it was also preventing the furthering of the mosaic concept. By standing in the way of the same creativity of creating mosaics, the mosaic concept was halted from becoming something more than Robert Silvers has the capacity to see of it. The result is that the ludicrous idea of protecting a look and feel of any type of art form caused it flounder in its proper growth as an art form.

Since the repeal of the majority of Robert Silver’s patent I’ve continued to produce my own mosaics which are distributed throughout this portion of the article. In the attempt to continue moving the mosaic style forward I also put together a video concept I originally had in 2001 where each frame of a video is a mosaic. The final result is below and is the original trailer for the game Half-Life 2 made from images from the game.

PROGRESSION OF ART

There have been countless numbers of art forms and art periods in the history of man. The progression of each art period is built on the period before it in a positive advancement of an art style or a deviation/derision of it. Some art periods are the result of a direct opposition to the previous art period but the basis of the new period is still grounded in the techniques learned from previous art periods.

Think about what would have occurred if entire art forms, techniques or styles had been copyrighted at any point in history. If Impressionism were the sole domain of a few artists then what would have happened to the next generation of artists? The patent placed on photo mosaics is the worst sort of creativity hindrance. Instead of sharing what was learned in the process of creating mosaics the entire process was hidden and kept secret, only available to those that work at Runaway Technologies.

Imagine if the Renaissance was limited to a handful of painters and sculptors in one country. The most likely outcome would be that the Renaissance would have either floundered quickly or lasted a great deal of time longer. In either case the result would have been that the stylization changes necessary for the following Neoclassicism period would not have been present and in place at the proper time. It’s impossible to say what the eventual outcome would be on the art world today, but it’s a good illustration of why creativity should be shared and not kept under lock and key.

OWNERSHIP OF SOURCE FILES

On the site LinkedIn is a conversation regarding graphic designers and ownership. The discussion starts with a board member of a non-profit organization asking about the ownership of a newsletter and brochure files created by another board member that is leaving. The issue is that the member leaving is refusing to give the organization the original InDesign and Photoshop files claiming that since they created the design the files belong to them.

I’ve served as a board member of a non-profit and you can see some of that work on this site. When I ended my relationship with the group I handed over all the source files to the group. Why? Because the work I did for them should belong to them. I wasn’t paid for any of the work and even if I had I still would have passed on all the original source files to the group. The reason is that the work I do for other people belongs to them. It doesn’t make any sense, either in my instance or in the LinkedIn discussion, for a designer to keep the original source files if a client asks for them. That doesn’t mean you can’t keep a copy of the files for yourself, but what is that designer really going to do with a newsletter and brochure created for a specific organization.

At the end of a business relationship with clients I don’t trash the files I completed for them or delete them. I repurpose them and re-use them if it fits in with another client. Take a look around the internet and you’ll find the same thing occurring everywhere, specifically when it comes to blog services. You can customize a site to use different colors and graphics but the same underlying template and appearance is used over and over again. The same principles hold true for other graphic design. Just because the template was used for one client doesn’t mean it can’t be used again for someone else.

With the newsletter mentioned before, the person who started the post didn’t mention what the final outcome was but I sympathize with them. Despite not knowing what all the circumstances surrounding the files, the only aspect I can think of that would prevent myself from delivering the original source files would be if a client hadn’t paid me yet. I’ve heard of too many stories of someone getting contracted to create a design for a client, deliver the finished product and then not get paid. In a situation like this it’s understandable that you wouldn’t want to release the source files as that would give the client the full ability to duplicate the work without any trouble at all, but if the matter didn’t revolve around the issue of payment then I don’t see any reason why the source files shouldn’t be delivered to the client.

I’M GOING TO STEAL FROM THEM, BUT DON’T YOU DARE STEAL FROM ME

The most recent controversy regarding copyrights and patents at the moment is Apple, Inc. suing Samsung because Apple alleged that Samsung knowingly copied the iPhone. While there may be some aspects of the iPhone that Samsung copied directly that would technically be seen as a lack of innovation on Samsung’s part, the real question is if Apple’s patents deserve to be patented and if so, what’s their reasoning for patenting?

Two components of the lawsuit which are completely ridiculous are Apple’s claims of their innovation regarding the iPhone’s case and the rounded corners of their icons. I don’t consider either instance to be innovative, especially with the icons since I’ve been putting rounded corners on images for a countless number of years. I can somewhat understand if a graphic design choice makes something easier to use and interpret, but like the photo mosaics, I don’t see that anything relating to graphic design will ever be truly innovative in that it allows something to function better as a result. The rounded corners on the iPhone’s icons hardly allow the device to function better than if the corners were pointed or even angled, so I’m lost in how Apple feels they’ve been innovative enough to warrant a patent on rounded corners. Even worse, someone at the patent office, Melanie H Tung to be exact, was the primary examiner and allowed the patent on rounded corner icons to be finalized. You can see a copy of the patent document here.

The reason why this is so ridiculous is that the design doesn’t actually do anything. The claim from the patent states that this design is “the ornamental design for a graphical user interface for a display screen or portion thereof, as shown and described.” The description in the patent doesn’t even describe the image, it just references it. What this says is that the design is so unimaginative that there isn’t a way to describe it to make it apparent as to why it’s innovative and should be patented.

The astonishing thing of the Apple lawsuit is that they’re not exactly known for innovation. Their track record of acquiring other companies and then injecting the technology into their own products has been their thing for many years. Siri is the most recent example of this as Siri was formerly an app sold on Apple’s marketplace prior to it being included in their iPhone 4s. Steve Jobs was known for crediting Dieter Rams’ design philosophy for all of Apple’s products. Dieter had ten principles for good design, which you can read here https://www.vitsoe.com/gb/about/good-design, that Steve adhered to. Dieter Rams is also known for design for the Braun company. So in addition to Steve crediting Dieter Rams for his design philosophy, Steve also felt it was a good idea to copy Dieter’s actual designs of Braun products for Apple’s products as well. You can see a comparison of some of the designs here. This really reflects poorly on Apple’s decision to go after Samsung for creating something that looks and functions exactly as their product since Apple did the exact same thing themselves.

This scene from Pirates of Silicon valley sums it up pretty well.

While I could continue writing about this topic for a while, and possibly have already gone on too long, I hope that reading this has possibly opened you up to thinking about what we’re attempting to accomplish through patent and copyright law. At the end of the day my hope would be that any sort of design or innovation would be made available to benefit the world, not just to make a few people overtly wealthy.