I recently published a watch face that was removed by the Facer system within a few minutes. Now, to my knowledge it most probably was due to the fact I used the brand name either on the watch face itself or in my wording/description of it. How can I check if I received a copyright strike to my account? I’m not sure yet.
The 2nd part of the question is, the watch face was based on a well known brand. So if I was to either remove the branding or replace it with my own will that bypass the terms of service?
So my question is, why the double standards? My initial design was similar to those and in my mind I thought it would be O.K. to proceed. But I was wrong, and I also seemingly lost the appeal to have the watch face returned to the editor in an unpublished state so that I can make the necessary changes to it.
I seem to recall ( but I could be wrong ) that the system auto-generates an email when faces are deleted like that - did you get one? Other than that, it is safe to assume that the system could and maybe does keep a tally of such events. However, I doubt a couple of these types of “learning the rules” infringements are a serious issue; I imagine it might become one though if it persisted or if a designer started to receive take-down orders from trademark/copyright holders.
It sounds like your face was removed by the automatic check that happens on submission. As I understand it the system attempts to confirm that a new face has no known/reported breaches and removes ones that meet certain criteria. It is not perfect and some get through and there is also a very small number of false positives ( much less now as the system has improved over time ). Removing trademarks may allow the face to get through the auto-check however that does not mean that the face complies with the TOS - as well as not using someone else’s trademarks, to comply the face must also not use ( without permission ) any copyrighted content, registered designs or anything else that breaches someone’s intellectual property rights.
But yes, there are a number of published faces that were either published before the system was in place / improved or have managed to get through for some reason - the system is not perfect. Over time many of these faces will end up being removed following take-down orders by IP owners. Some brand names stay up longer than others as different owners are more concerned or vigilant than others. But there is no double standard as such - I believe you are just seeing old faces or the results of an imperfect automatic system that has failed to pickup breaches and IP owners having not yet issued take-down orders.
In my experience Faces are often Taken Down immediately because of an infringement in the Title or description . In my case I used the word Zenith to describe the highest position of the Sun in a day . By all accounts those of Design will have to be scanned by a person and may take longer . By far and away the best Work I have seen on Facer is Stunningly Original . Please Share any Text you think might have caused the problem and I could add it to this list .
Just be careful what you use in your creations, titles, and descriptions. I had a request taken down once because I put in the description the guys username who requested it, ROLEX, and that seriously IS his username.
“Casio” and “G-Shock”, I should’ve paid better attention. The face I created was just inspired by the brand, not copied or plagiarized. All original vectors created by myself in Corel Draw then later exported to Photoshop. My aim was to pay tribute to the brand in my own way by designing something similar to what we expect from them. Thanks for the duplication tip by the way, I will keep that in mind. And I will just steer clear and be conscious of naming or wording conventions.
I also came along such even among the “Get inspired by the community!” section and that too can contribute to false impression that using some known brands was OK. I am not eager to flag such faces, as I cant know whether the author has a brands permission or not, but if yes, stating something about it in description would help things.
That is why I have come up with my own brand names. Americatron, Amish-Fit, Nonagon, Omicron, Route 66, Thunderstruck, Tig Welder and Watch-X among other lesser used ones.
