Guinness Time again. But this time it's an Intellectual Property issue

I have written before on here about Guinness signage across London. One of the signs I've photographed most often is the broken Millennium clock on the corner of the Archway Tavern, London N19, announcing GUINNESS TIME with a repair man standing on an ostrich and a sea lion. Here's wider view from Google streetview in 2008, which is the same year I took the following photo:

This cropped (and squashed) version was until recently available on my Jane's London Etsy site as a greeting card and in various print formats. Despite it being available on that selling site for ten years, I have this week received an email notification informing me that the listing has been removed for Intellectual Property reasons after Etsy were alerted by a VP of Enforcement via Diageo GB/ corsearch.com. Etsy's response to this is to immediately remove the listing without discussion. Oh great. Thanks. 

Here's one of the montages from my listing showing the formats available:

Description from my Etsy listing: [this is] My photo of the Guinness promotional clock on the corner of the Archway Tavern public house on Navigator Square, N19, taken in May 2008 when the sign was still complete. Sadly, today it's in a sorry state as many of the letters have fallen off. Let's hope the new owners fix it.

It's rather ironic that the sign depicts a repair man because, during the subsequent years, the sign started to literally fall apart. 

In September 2017, I was talking about it to a lady who works at a shop near the Archway Tavern. She told me that she had rescued one of the fallen letters having found it on the pavement. At that time the pub was completely closed and in a state of flux. We discussed how surely it was possible for someone with a tall ladder or access to a cherry picker to repair the sign and replace or reinstate the missing parts. Getting the mechanism to work would be a bonus. I then wrote a blog post – Save the Guinness Sign and sent a link to it within an email to Guinness' brand management at Diageo.com. 

I was pleased to get a fairly swift response from Josh Spooner who said that they were glad I had brought it to their attention and they'd look into it, but they didn't have the budget to repair it. He asked if I knew who might undertake the repair work (er, if I knew that I wouldn't be having this email exchange, duh!). The matter was then passed on to someone called Francesca Hillman at freuds.com (who? more info abut this company needed) who sent me the following email on 28th Sept 2017, saying that the sign is the responsibility of the landlord:

Eh? From this we glean that Guinness are more than happy with the free advertising but they don't want to have anything to do with the upkeep of their own installation. I am befuddled as to why their brand people are now getting their knickers in a twist about a sign they have shown no interest in for decades. 

It's worth pointing out that my cards and prints were available on Etsy during this email exchange yet Diageo and Freuds didn't flag up any infringement back then. 

I let the matter drop and hoped that when the pub finally reopened that the new owner would repair the  sign. But no, it got worse and worse. It literally fell apart, as is evident in this 2022 streetview which is that latest available view on that platform. 

Re the removal of my Etsy listing, there is no facility for me to make a counter claim or provide any explanation. Etsy have simply acted in this way because a big corporate company has roared. Ooh scary!  I wonder if the Archway Tavern has been told to remove what's left of the sign for the same reasons?! I doubt it.

The Etsy removal notice included the name and email the person at Corsearch/Diageo so I wrote to him including a condensed version of the sign's history. I also made a point that the internet is awash with fake Guinness products and perhaps they ought to go after those plagiarists rather than pick on someone who truly cares about historic advertising that Guinness themselves admit is not their property! If I get a response I will add it here.

But hey – I've hardly ever sold many of this image over the years, except to Archway local residents. Please get in touch with me direct via jane@janeslondon.com if you are interested.  

This is not the first time I have trodden on toes re Intellectual Property. In October 2018 had another image removed from my Etsy site because it was said to infringe London Transport's rules. The joke is that this was also an image of part of the Archway Tavern – one of the tiled doorway thresholds that depicts a toucan and a pint of the black stuff on a roundel – yet, in all these years, Guinness don't seem to have been bothered by that one. 

Actually, whilst I'm on the subject... on the flip side, I have myself reported some sellers on Etsy for blatantly copying my clay pipe jewellery. Some of these 'designers' even had the cheek to also copy and paste my written descriptions.  I messaged these people directly and asked where they got their inspiration from. Most didn't have the nouse to realise who I was. One woman told me she'd come up with her ideas quite recently yet she couldn't explain why her necklaces were almost direct copies of mine, even down to the way they were photographed. Worth noting that she had nothing similar or original for sale. Many of the other copyists didn't have the nouse to work out who I was until I included a link to my own work. 

My complaints about this to Etsy fell on deaf ears. They as good as ignored me and did not remove those sellers or their products. I do not have the weight of a corporate giant. 

These people continue to trade on their site. Add to this that most of those sellers are also contravening the PLA's strict rules about mudlarking, specifically making money form items made from Thames foreshore finds – you need a special Creative permit to do this, and I have one.