Ford Dealership Apparently Steals Artwork from Firewatch

So I've been following this tweet and it's interesting. The tweet points at Ford but it's actually a dealership that did it. They stole (or their marketing agency possibly) official artwork from Firewatch. Going through the replies to the original tweet you can see where a couple of outlets have picked up the story and the response from the dealership has been completely unprofessional.

https://twitter.com/dustinhorne/status/747530317586563072

 

oh dear. such pretty imagery though.

 

Whoops, someone is getting fired (or losing their contract). Though it is pretty.

 

I noticed a local pizza place using some nice artwork for their flyer. One day I was googling something somewhat related to the name of the place and saw that image as the first image result. Some people don't get it, they think if they can find art online then they can use said art however they want and nobody will ever know.

I like the local pizza place and the owners, so I'm not turning them in, but someone might someday.

 

Interestingly, the dealership claimed to have gotten the image from some website for imagery but the developers of Firewatch said the image that was used is used only on their own website and has elements in it that aren't in Amy of the circulating wallpapers, etc.

Now, accidents can happen, and ad agencies can be irresponsible but the dealership is handling it poorly from what I've seen so far.

 

To put an alternative out there... it's quite possible that someone else pinched the image and put it up on a stock image site or similar. It happens with game assets.

Clearly someone still pinched it, but we really don't know who.

 

I often wonder about restaurants using artwork and imagery that may or may not be licensed. I used to live at a place by a Godfather's Burgers, that used imagery and likenesses from the movie(s). I don't know if they were allowed to. I'd imagine that any place called Godfather's (any sort of food, especially Italian) restaurant could get into some trouble with the movie studio if they don't have the okay to use it.

 

It looks to me like that was the case to be honest. The dealership admitted it but said it could be their advertising and they're checking to see if it is from Ford corporate. Ford corporate commented and said they have nothing to do with the ad campaign. It'll be interesting to see if anything comes of it.

 

FAIL, sue Ford and make a few million $$

 

Its always worth doing a google search. If google thinks your art work belongs to another brand, then its too close.

Someone somewhere is going to loose out over this. It doesn't exactly look like just a local rouge dealer either. This video looks to be hosted on the official Ford channel. And the art work has a lot of similarity to the fire watch art, though it doesn't appear to be a direct rip off.

 

Near my last house there was an independent restaurant who decided to use the name "Sushi Train" even though that's a big, well known chain restaurant here and they weren't a part of it. I think it lasted a fortnight before they suddenly changed all their signage to something else...

 

Wow!

(Slow clap)

Knowing the way the law is going you'd try to send a Cease and Desist, and end up getting sued with Ford owning the rights to the game.

 

Careful man, I have a video game called "Cease and Desist" and own both of those words.

 

The Consumerist website has a quote from the ad company on this. I'll let the quote from the article speak for itself:

 

There's a lot more info on this on an article on GamaSutra.

 

I guess someone should register "and" as a trademark as well, just to make thing more interesting.

 

In fairness there were references to this video and there was a follow-up from one (or some) of the game reporting sites. After talking with Ford and some additional research, they found that the mountains in the video where actually original artwork that they commissioned to have created.. it's just stylistically similar.

It's probably not a coincidence though... I'm guessing that the mountains used in that video were the inspiration for the ad people when they picked the wallpaper to use.

This is exactly what I was referring to when I said the dealership wasn't handling it responsibly / professionally.

 

This is a real pitfall. You really have to do your homework. Here is what people do. They steal artwork. Then they post it on a free sharing site (CCO or whatever), then they wait awhile, log in as a different account, download the work and if they get called out for using it, they cite the CCO from the sharing website that they themselves created. At the very worst, they claim they were deceived because it was marked as CC0 and they apologize and stop using it.

There are just so many countries where IP and copyright issues are just not part of their culture. Where I live ( poor third world country) if you tell people they can´t just print Mickey Mouse on a t-shirt, they would look at you like you are crazy. China has this problem. And then you have a host of other countries where they know it is illegal, but they also know their gov´t would never enforce it.

 

Or they steal artwork and then upload it to a paid stock site where they're defrauding both the site and anyone who buys the assets.

I've mentioned it before around here, a friend of mine once bought a car from a major 3D model retailer and recognized it as being ripped from a major console title. He only picked up on that by sheer luck, having been playing that specific car in that specific game andhaving the eye to spot that it wasn't just the same car, but the same geometry.