The manufacturer of sparkling wine complained about the artist who drew the Odessa cat
The Odesa artist became famous thanks to her portrait of a cat with a bottle of champagne. But the owner of the Odessa trademark accused her of improper use of the image. We understand what happened.
Fighting cats
Yulia Podmoghina from Odesa caught the beginning of a full-scale invasion of Russia in Mexico, where she was vacationing with her boyfriend. They could not immediately return to their homeland, so Yulia supported Ukraine as much as she could: she went to protests and painted posters, while her boyfriend helped the army and volunteers.
The girl missed her cat, who remained in Odessa. At that time, volunteers were creating terror defense units in the city, so she drew a cat from ‘Bandera Smoothie’ in its paw and the inscription ‘Odessa’ on the bottle.
The picture became viral on the network, so Yulia decided to continue the series with portraits of fighting cats. And she was offered to monetize the drawings – to print T-shirts with images of cats. She directed all the stolen money to help volunteers and the Armed Forces.
Gradually, the series grew: her cats became more and more popular. After the liberation of the Snake Island, Yulia’s drawing was even published by the speaker of the Odesa Military Administration, Serhii Bratchuk.
But all kinds of businessmen began to print cats on their products without the permission of the author. Yulia tried to fight them, proving copyright, but the flow could not be stopped.
A fake T-shirt with a cat was even presented to General Marchenko. Yulia promised to give him a T-shirt with a quality print.
Claim from the right holder
And now Yulia herself was accused of copyright infringement. In September, she received a letter from the owner of the Odessa trademark. The lawyers did not like that the picture with the cat used an image of a bottle of sparkling wine with a label.
The claim came not even from the champagne wine factory, which has not produced wine under this brand since 2017, but from the Kulevcha farm. It owns the rights to the name Odessa. The lawyers demanded that products with the Odesa cat be removed from sale.
Julia wrote about this case on the social network, and the reaction of users turned out to be very interesting. Lawyers offered their help, and the well-known Odesa restaurateur Oleksandr Gatsko even announced that he was removing all the champagne wine factory’s products from the menu and counters. But later it turned out that the plant itself has nothing to do with the scandal.
As the copyright expert Alina Seroshtan-Tatarynova explained, no one can register the name of the city as a trademark. Also, the rights to a bottle of sparkling wine cannot be applied to a design, but only to the production of bottles with a label and their sale. And the most important argument is that the logo registered by ‘Kulevcha’ is not at all similar to the one depicted in the picture with the cat.
The artist herself decided to change the drawing so that the copyright holder would no longer have any claims against her. And instead of Odessa, the Ukrainian version with one ‘c’ is written on the bottle – Odesa.
