Graphic Artists Guild vs Illustrators Partnership

This showed up on Mike Lynch’s blog.

The Illustrators Partnership of America and 5 individuals have* been served with a lawsuit by the Graphic Artists Guild, claiming damages of a million dollars and demanding that a court order IPA to cease and desist from supposedly defamatory public comments about GAG’s activities and use of industry reprographic royalties, even when IPA is merely quoting GAG’s own statements. The Complaint alleges that IPA, by bringing together 13 diverse illustrators organizations with the goal of creating an illustrators rights collecting society, is wrongfully interfering with GAG’s current claim on foreign royalties, calling it an effort to ’siphon off’ money from GAG. The Complaint specifically alleges that IPA and IPA members defamed GAG by a verbatim reading of minutes from a GAG steering committee meeting at which GAG’s President reported on their organization’s use of foreign funds. IPA’s statements relied on public assertions by GAG’s officers that GAG does not have to account for its use of artists’ reprographic royalties.

The Graphic Artist Guild’s response:

Graphic Artists Guild Statement Regarding IPA Petition to Withdraw Lawsuit

November 19, 2008 - The Graphic Artists Guild filed a lawsuit in the Supreme Court of New York recently regarding actions by several individuals of a rival organization who repeatedly and knowingly issued false and defamatory statements to the public about Guild activities and motives.

The defendants named in the lawsuit have made false and inflammatory accusations against the Guild leadership to the point of causing the Guild’s reputation great harm. Further, these acts are intended to split the artistic community when precisely the opposite is called for, which makes it a detriment to artists everywhere.

The Guild responded to the allegations being made against it in October 2004, in response to an August 2004 letter from the defendants. At that time, the Guild advised the defendants in writing that the Guild has met, and continues to meet, the guidelines provided by the distributing RROs since it began receiving the RRO funds and that the Guild had resolved its budgetary and fiscal issues long before receipt of their August 2004 letter. The Guild has been, and continues to be, on solid and balanced financial footing with no concerns of financial instability. Notwithstanding the Guild’s October 2004 correction, the defendants continue to ignore it and issue false statements about the state of the Guild’s financial status.

For example, only last year one of the defendants accused the Guild of being involved in the disappearance of tens of millions of dollars in reprographic monies. This particular defendant continued his defamatory attack earlier this year by stating at an open forum that the Guild “surreptitiously took (i.e., “stole”) millions of dollars.”

This lawsuit is not an offensive act. It is a last resort defensive measure to stop an unrelenting assault on the Guild and its leadership that has lasted over four years despite numerous attempts to resolve the issue amicably. When it became clear that the defendants involved had no interest in ceasing their attacks, the Guild was forced to seek justice through the court system.

Finally, we have advised defendants’ counsel even after commencement of the lawsuit that we are still open to a dialogue which would lead to a peaceful resolution of our differences. We are still awaiting a response.

There is a lot of bad blood between the two organizations, with some in The Illustrator’s Partnership alleging that the GAG has been supporting Orphan Works legislation in hopes of getting a piece of online royalties from a registry. A member of the Illustrator’s Partnership actually posted words to that effect on this blog. In fact, the GAG has opposed Orphan Works, and only supported the House Bill (which never passed) as a stop gap measure to try to derail the Senate Bill (which passed).

In light of the recent settlement between Google and the Authors Guild, I don’t think a royalty deal for online use is such a bad idea, especially if it can be used as an alternative to simply letting works go out of print or “orphaning” them.

Or letting the book pirates continue to pretend they are performing a public service while raking in advertising dough on copyrighted works.

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Posted under: CREATOR RIGHTS, FINANCE, EDUCATION