The Groove Issue 28 - THE VERY UNUSUAL PATH TO CREATIVE OWNERSHIP
Welcome to the 28th issue of The Groove.
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THE VERY UNUSUAL PATH TO CREATIVE OWNERSHIP
Ownership of ideas and creative control seem to be such fickle concepts in our world, where one can post an image on social media and within minutes it is exposed to millions of others who can appropriate it, screenshot it, forward it, use it for inspiration to create something else, or blatantly copy it without ever giving credit to its original executor.
How Did We Start Owning Creativity?
Before patents and copyrights existed, artists were the earliest creative entrepreneurs in history. It is natural that they were the ones who came up with the idea of owning creative work, with a concept as simple as adding a signature to their creations during the early Renaissance.
Before that, it was unthinkable for artists, architects, and artisans to claim ownership over their creations. Back then, the point of making objects of great beauty, or building massive castles, was to show that God had given people talents to create. Collaborative effort between different disciplines was also encouraged but individual ownership of works was not.
It was Italian painter Giotto di Bondone who was believed to be the first one to sign his paintings in the late 1400s.
Michelangelo Buonarotti followed suit, and the only sculpture where he carved his rubric was his marble masterpiece the Pietà, finished in 1499 and which reads “MICHEL ANGELUS BONAROTUS FLORENT FACIEBAT” across the sash draped over Mary’s breast. The signature is interspersed with strange dots, symbols and letters within letters. Historians believe that through the manipulation of his signature Michelangelo wrote this: “The Florentine Michelangelo Buonarroti, a messenger from God, made this.”
The Pietà by Michelangelo Buonarotti in St. Peter’s basilica at the Vatican and a close up of the signature across Mary’s chest. This was the only sculpture where Michelangelo carved his signature in 1499.
The practice of signing artworks then became commonplace, because the creations of the Renaissance artists were so important to nobles, monarchs, and aristocrats (bragging about who owned what started with art, inside the houses of the Medici and the Borgias), that it propelled the idea of creative ownership to other areas.
That’s why by the time the Industrial Revolution began in the late 1700s, products such as soap and packaged food started having names and stamps given to them by their manufacturers. This was the beginning of “branding.”
The strategy of marking things with a distinctive symbol 275 years ago was made with the intent of differentiating the offerings from one another, and by the late 19th century, all these businesses had invested so much in branding that they needed a way to protect those investments from competitors.
And in 1870 the Congress first attempted to establish a federal trademark regime, which granted some intellectual property protection, culminating with the passing of the Trademarks Registration Act in 1875, which was a pivotal moment that changed everything from “making” something to “owning” it.
Levi’s, for example, one of the few of those 19th century brands that is still alive (and thriving) got a patent in 1873 for the “improvement in fastening pocket-openings”. That patent expired in 1890 and left Levi's with no other choice but to differentiate its blue jeans through branding using federal trademark registrations covering everything from product names to design features.
But it seems that at the speed at which information travels and disseminates these days, no laws or patents protect anyone, anymore.
The 1899 Levi’s logo which was trademarked too after Levi’s patent expired in 1890.
Ideas Are A Dime A Dozen
Remember the story of Sara Blakely’s patent for Spanx? She cut the feet of a pair of pantyhose with the hopes of looking smooth under her clothes and banged her head on the wall wondering why nobody had sold these products she so much needed. She asked many attorneys to write her a patent and they all told her she was crazy.
Blakely wrote the patent herself and launched the first shapewear company in history, which would eventually become a billion-dollar enterprise. Thousands of imitators came and went, until Kim Kardashian launched Skims, following the same concept of Spanx, a brand she had claimed to love and wear every day. Can Blakely sue Kardashian for infringing a patent? No, because Skims does the same job (or better, I dare to say) but it doesn’t look exactly the same. According to Vogue Business, Skims sold 3 million units between its launch in the fall of 2019 and October of 2020.
Rip Offs Are the Rule
What about people who share their Netflix (or Hulu, HBO Max, Disney+) password with friends and family who do not live in the same household? That’s a violation of the terms, but in a way it also benefits the streaming services that want more eyes to be hooked to their content. (They know of the violations and overlook them as it often works in bringing more subscribers.)
Even Elon Musk told Wired in 2012, regarding SpaceX, that “we have essentially no patents... Our primary long-term competition is in China—if we published patents, it would be farcical, because the Chinese would just use them as a recipe book.”
Ryder Ripps is an artist and creative director who freely moves between the worlds of art, fashion, and technology. In 2013, Ripps was hired to build the website for a clothing company called BEEN TRILL – a brand that was ⅓ owned by the now Louis Vuitton Men’s and Off White creative director, Virgil Abloh.
When Abloh saw the many talents that Ripps possessed, he asked him to start making designs for him. But in 2014, one of Ripps full-time associates left his creative studio and went to work with Abloh. That was the last time Abloh paid Ripps.
In 2015, Ripps had a large and successful exhibition at Red Bull Studios in New York, where he combined art and fashion, including the design of scarves and jackets labeled with words of what the item was as well as some of its parts. So for example, the scarf would say “scarf” and the pocket in one of the jackets would highlight the word close to the pocket itself. Nobody had done such a thing before. That is, until two years later when in 2017, Abloh debuted an Off White collection that did exactly the same and earned him the titles of “genius,” “conceptual artist,” and “original”.
Of course, Ripps did what any other infuriated ripped-off person would do: he took to the internet and social media and started exposing the theft of his designs. According to Ripps, in the years that followed, even though he was ready to sue Abloh, the two somehow worked things out.
When I asked Ripps what he could have done differently he answered via email: “been more confident, believed in myself more, wasted less time.” And when I asked him if instances like what happened to him could be prevented in the future, he responded that “[it is] unavoidable, the trick is to just master timing and execution and not get too hung up on the opaque nuances of authorship.”
Ryder Ripps’s designs from his 2015 show are on the left side of the screen. Off White’s items to the right, debuted in different collections starting on 2017. Images courtesy of Ryder Ripps.
Where Do We Go from Here?
It is more than evident that intellectual property laws, at least in the United States, aren’t strong enough to protect everyone, not big corporations like SpaceX, not independent creative directors like Ripps.
I’ve always advocated for the concept of creativity where one builds something better or something different from what already exists. You can take an idea, a concept, a product, or a service and elevate it, adapt it, or mix it with something else and make it your own. But blatantly copying someone else and running with that person’s idea to profit without crediting and compensating the originator, is a form of theft.
I strongly believe that these are matters of ethics, reputation, and reciprocity. Nobody wants to be known as a swindler. News of these exploits travels at the speed of lightning, causing damage to the imitators’ names who thought of themselves as too smart or too invincible to get caught.
Ripps’s candid answer, seems quite fitting – just go ahead and release your creations when the timing and the execution are right. Mastering this perfect moment requires confidence, business savvy and intuition; skills that creative people should cultivate before jumping too fast to reveal a great idea in any marketplace.
Thank you for reading this far. Looking forward to hearing from you anytime.
PS: There are no affiliate links here. Everything that I recommend here is done freely.
THE EXTRA GROOVE
Read:
Mine!: How the Hidden Rules of Ownership Control Our Lives by Michael A. Heller and James Salzman
Creativity without Law: Challenging the Assumptions of Intellectual Property by Kate Darling
Michelangelo: Pietà by Robert Hupka
Watch: