Just wanted to share some of this funny email exchange I've been having with a designer. I was contacted about a single graphic that is part of a set. This designer claims to have created a similar graphic for a client logo which has since been registered as a trademark, the client then found my similar stock graphic and is upset about it. My suspicion is that this designer either created a similar design based on my stock graphic or just outright used the stock graphic as the logo. The latter scenario happens a lot.

So this designer now needs to buy the rights to the graphic so I'll stop selling it as stock. I quoted my price for the buyout, a price that I've asked for in most buyout situations and which I've never had any issues or complaints with.

The response I got was basically that my price is "unfair", that we should "work together on this" and figure out a fair price. I've been told before that my price is beyond someone's budget, but I can't recall ever being called "unfair". I feel like a kid on a playground. "Hey, that's not fair!"

To me, this is another perfect example of the weird situation that anyone in a creative professions frequently finds themselves in, in which other people think they have a right to decide what I should be paid. And fortunately it's a situation that happens often enough that I can just laugh about it now.

In thinking about some of the buyout requests I've had, there have been some other interesting ones. Particularly the guy who contacted me wanting to buy the rights to an icon that he had tattooed on his arm thinking it was a custom design that his graphic designer created for his company logo.

Anyone else have any interesting/weird/funny buyout request stories?

Whatever happens Mike it sounds like you have this figured out right and probably asked a fair price. Shenanigans is a good descriptive word for them.

Can't answer the buyout, I don't do graphic design. Image offers, people paid and it was either contract and they got them, or I still owned all rights after the license and they could re-sell wherever they wanted, with no further payments.

I'm sure there is always a lawyer out there that would love to discuss "fairness". Although, they probably use the term justice. 

...I am not going after them but can imagine them coming to me and asking to remove "their" "custom made" designs.

This is one of my biggest fears in this business. Someone could very rightly suspect that one of my designs is a copy of their logo, a logo that they paid some "designer" for and truly believe that they own. When in reality the designer just grabbed a stock graphic and passed it off as custom logo design.

What's to stop someone from complaining to Shutterstock or any other company and getting my account suspended? Sure I can defend against these claims, but my account would still likely be suspended pending the investigation.

Or in this particular case, the designer gets pissed that I won't sell them rights to the design for peanuts so they get back at me by making an infringement claim against me. Again, even though I can prove I created my design before they created the logo (date of creation came up in the email exchange), my SS account could still be suspended temporarily while it's sorted out.

It's scary to think that I could lose a huge chunk of my daily income so easily just because some hack designer resold my work or got upset with me.