October 2007
While visiting a local arts and crafts store to pick up framing materials, Pavlak ran across his own artwork – in a discount bin! Pavlak recounts the story, below:
"In October 2007, I was in our local arts and crafts store called Pat Catans, which is a pretty big chain here in northern Ohio and Western Pennsylvania. I was shopping for some matte board to frame some prints to hang at the vet clinic where I work part time. I was walking past the framing section where they also sold inexpensive prints in bins. I noticed one print that looked vaugely familiar. After picking it up to take a closer look, I realized that this print was one of my paintings, done back in 1988. I flipped through the other bins of prints and found a second one. This one was done back in 1984. Both were printed in a borderless 16 x 20 size. My signature was cropped off of both of them. I purchased both prints because on the backs of them were printed the information of what I though was the publisher, but turned out to be the distributor.
The name of the company who was the distributor was called North American Art. I called the number listed along with the address and name of the company and spoke with the company president. He told me the name of the publishing house where he purchased the prints from for resale to arts and craft stores and gave me a phone number that he had for this company. The name of the publisher was called Northwest Publishing, and the owner's name was Paul Anish. I called the number that the distributor gave me, and the person who answered said that another entity purchased them and changed the name to Sundance Graphics. She also told me that Paul Anish was no longer associated with the business.
While visiting a local arts and crafts store to pick up framing materials, Pavlak ran across his own artwork – in a discount bin! Pavlak recounts the story, below:
"In October 2007, I was in our local arts and crafts store called Pat Catans, which is a pretty big chain here in northern Ohio and Western Pennsylvania. I was shopping for some matte board to frame some prints to hang at the vet clinic where I work part time. I was walking past the framing section where they also sold inexpensive prints in bins. I noticed one print that looked vaugely familiar. After picking it up to take a closer look, I realized that this print was one of my paintings, done back in 1988. I flipped through the other bins of prints and found a second one. This one was done back in 1984. Both were printed in a borderless 16 x 20 size. My signature was cropped off of both of them. I purchased both prints because on the backs of them were printed the information of what I though was the publisher, but turned out to be the distributor.
I spoke with many copyright attorneys about this during the weeks that followed. They all agreed that I had a legitimate complaint but cautioned that any monetary damages that I may recover wouldn't come close to covering the cost of litigation. I did a google search of Northwest Publishing and Paul Anish, and discovered that he was involved in a lawsuit back in 2005 for exactly doing the same thing of another very famous artists work and the holders of the copyright sued Northwest and Anish and won. I have been in contact with an individual who was part of the group who filed the suit. He lives in the Netherlands. He also said that to this day, Anish still has not paid one cent of the amount ordered to pay, (which I think was about 12,000 dollars).
During the months from January to April 2008, I discovered four more of my paintings at various Pat Catan stores. My signature was cropped off of all six reproductions, but they are mine and I have proof of that. I finally did contract an attorney to draw up a cease and desist letter and had him send them to all three entities involved in the distribution and sale: The publisher, distributor and Pat Catan's. We received replies immediately. The publisher saying they had no more in stock, that they must have been in the old catalogs which were prior to 2000. The distributor said he would go through his inventories and remove them. Pat catans said that they will have their employees go through their inventories as well. I went a step further on my own and talked with the distributor directly and asked him that rather than destroy them, which would be a shame, would he please either sell of give them to me. He gave them to me....
To this day I have never been able to determine the copy source for these prints. All the originals are in the hands of various individuals. I may have answered an ad in an artists magazine way back in the 1980's and sent in some slides for them to review. Maybe they got passed on to someone who sent them to this publisher. I may never know, however. I learned a lot about copyright and intellectual property law and will be sure to copyright things in the future." (back to news main page)
