Engle’s first big client was Warner Brothers TV.  He worked on images for Smallville’s launch.  After that Engle did work for Alias, CSI, and Lost.

Recently a friend of Engle’s told him that he was the subject of a discussion on StockArt.com.  Engle was actually banned from the website because he was being investigated for copyright infringement.  One of the logos that Engle was being accused of stealing was being reported by a client of StockArt.com.

I was first contacted by a stock art site in July of last year. They hit me with a bill for a whopping $18,000! I had an account with the site. Years ago I purchased an illustration of a chef’s hat for a client’s project. So, I thought this was some accounting mistake. Nope. This was a bill for new images. Very familiar images. They were images from several of my logos; 65 of them in fact. That breaks down to about $275 per image. They actually wanted me to pay them $275 for each one of MY images!

Where did StockArt.com get these numbers from? The logos that Engle created for LogoPond got lifted and posted them for sale on StockArt.com. After that StockArt.com hired a law firm that specializes in copyright infringement. The attorney asked for $18,000 and Engle refused to pay for it.

The law firm that StockArt not only asked for $18,000 but also contacted Engle’s clients telling them that he is being investigated for copyright infringement.

Now Engle is trying to figure out what to do from here whether it is looking up the timestamps for the logos uploaded on LogoPond or looking at the meta data in the source files.

[via JonEngle.com]