Did this Sony Bravia ad rip off Kozyndan?

The Los Angeles-based art duo Kozyndan appear to have had their fine work swiped by the folks responsible for an ad for Sony's BRAVIA series. Link. Non-NPOV alert: I love Kozyndan's work, and have some of it hanging on various walls in my home. (Thanks for everyone who suggested this since last week, I'm a few days late on catching up with submissions!)

• [Simon Greenwood]

  Maybe Sony have been in touch. It’s no surprise though. The advertising industry frequently lifts ideas and hopes that no-one will notice. Fortunately, they have enough spare cash to pay out for people who do.

• [parlo]

  You can see it here on the British site,

  http://bravia.sony.eu/bravia.html

  Click on Play Doh

  -parlo

• [nex]

  Sireture, where in the world are you that you’d've had to do something in order to get copyright for your own work? Usually it’s automatic, you’d just need some evidence that your work is older.

  However, the question is, did they copy your work? Sony’s ad illustrates chess mate with CGI of a decapitated king with bloody guts showing, which is not quite what you did. It’s possible that the artist did see your work and was inspired by it, but that’s outside of the scope of copyright.

• [Brady]

  the Kozyndan artwork in question is located here:

  http://www.kozyndan.com/assets/Usa_chan.jpg

  Have a nice day.

  -Brady

• [devophill]

  Q: Did this Sony Bravia ad rip off Kozyndan?

  A: Why, yes. Yes it did.

• [Anonymous]

  Here’s one of the guys that did the Bravia ad:

  http://ewarwoowar.typepad.com/25letters/2007/10/bravia-bunnies.html

• [noen]

  Agency’s do rip off artists. They will frequently ask for proposals from a artist and under current law the artist gives up their rights when they do. Then the agency is free to use the submitted material without compensating the artist. That appears to have been the case here.

  Via Gothamist

  “Sony Bravia Ad rip off Artists work The Sony Bravia ad that we were so fond of earlier this week has started to come under some controversy. It turns out that LA based artists KozyNDan had created a panoramic with bunnies taking over NYC a number of years ago. They were contacted by Passion Pictures, whom produced the spot, for samples of the working (including the panorama) but never heard from them again. Two years later, this amazing ad is released. It’s hard to not see the blatant rip off of KozyNDan’s work, and we hope that something positive comes out of it for them. Read this article on Gizmodo as they go into a bit more detail.”

• [Gunn]

  What Teresa said.

  Also, creativity is often associational. The creative mind often works laterally from one idea to another, collaging concepts together to make a new and striking juxtaposition. If an artist doesn’t go far enough from the original inspiration, the work can be trite or derivative.

  The Sony ad seems derivative to me. They could have filed off a few more serial numbers, imo. There’s a qualitative difference between being inspired by something and just ripping it off. Perhaps they were seduced by that maximum bunny cuteness.

  The Sony video begs the question, in that it describes how the ad was made, rather than where the idea came from. It’s noise.

  Eileen

• [Teresa Nielsen Hayden / Moderator]

  Artists have retentive memories. Sometimes they’ll pull up some old image or description without realizing it wasn’t originally theirs. Also, sometimes they’ll duplicate someone else’s work in considerable detail, completely by chance. I’ve seen it happen dozens of times.

  Kingdom of Awesome (11), that’s just strange. The exploding paint ad was nothing like the 9/11 attacks.

• [tonx]

  interesting detail – both the original panorama and the sony ad have nods to Space Invader at the opening. That should indicate that this was more than just coincidental inspiration though the bunnywave makes it pretty clear.

• [Anonymous]

  More on CR – http://www.creativereview.co.uk/crblog/passion-sony-play-doh-no-rip-off/

• [Kingdom Of Awesome]

  I read an article last year about how someone thought the Bravia ad with paint exploading from windows was a direct pull from the Sept. 11th attacks.

• [Steven]

  that bravia ad with all the bouncing superballs set to that josé gonzález song was also a direct ripoff of an older piece by canadian artist lucy pullen.

  it rankles me more when fine art pieces get misappropriated like this, but i guess i’d feel differently if i were an illustrator.

• [Anonymous]

  Sony Denies Swiping Play-Doh Bunnies Ad

  http://blog.wired.com/gadgets/2007/10/sony-explains-h.html#more

• [pandaterror]

  It really is a great ad. What a pity if it was swiped but sadly, being in advertising myself, i think that’s very likely. I saw another post about this one yesbutnobutyes where you can have a look at the mural they say it was swiped from. Here’s the link: http://www.yesbutnobutyes.com/archives/2007/10/art_imitates_ar.html

• [Scypher]

  404′d!

• [Anonymous]

  Sireture:

  The link isn’t working right now, but if your photograph was lifted and used (not a similar type of photograph, but hte actual image), you can go after Sony very easily. It’s not a copyright issue, it’s simply usage and clearance. You were not asked nor paid for your work, and therefore are owed money.
  I work in advertising (as a creative, not an evil corporate imp thank god), and this is not that uncommon. It has little to do with being non-caring ad folks with tons of money, and more to do with being a moron.
  Chances are it wasn’t even Sony, but the ad agency who did it.
  Also, as a side note, stealing an “idea” has no reppercussions really. It’s stealing an “expression” or replicating something verbatim where you get into copyright issues. If Kozyndan could argue that their expression was stolen, then they have a case. But most likely not.

• [Crunchbird]

  I think this kind of thing goes on all the time, and that unfortunately it tends to fall somewhere in between innocent “inspiration” and outright, deliberate theft. I even have my own story of a run-in with an ad agency that had been paying a little too close attention to the contemporary art world.

  A few years ago, I noticed that television commercials for a certain birth control pill were clearly and fairly blatantly copying Andy Goldsworthy sculptures. Given what I knew of Goldsworthy (especially the fact that he had successfully sued a British furniture store chain for “borrowing” his imagery), it seemed surprising he had licensed his images to a big pharmaceutical company in the US.

  I got in touch with his US representatives, their lawyers apparently got in touch with the drug company, and within a few weeks all of the borrowed images had quickly and quietly disappeared from the ad campaign. All I got out of it was a thank you note from the gallery and an unsigned copy of one of Goldsworthy’s books, mind you, but I’m pretty sure that the drug company had to write a check to make sure it didn’t turn into a lawsuit and news story. Sometimes people are innocently inspired by images that have accumulated in their subconscious or elsewhere … other times they blatantly rip off the work of others because they think no one will notice OR they’ll just be able to bluster their way through it and get away with it.

• [Sireture]

  well, to let you know i’ve also had SONY rip my art off, too.

  http://i13.tinypic.com/4cnavqp.jpg

  i didn’t copyright this photograph so i assumed i had no case. any thoughts?

• [Kingdom Of Awesome]

  Actually I heard the bouncy ball bit was ripped off a david letterman spot from the 80′s where they dump a bunch of fruit down hills.

  Sireture, your photo wasn’t even close. You are not the first or last to make a bleeding chess piece, you can’t copyright an idea like that.

  And the agency who made the play-do ad is called Fallon.