Companies have been caught multiple times plagiarising artworks for their own gain, but this story is different. When Weinye Chen, a 30-year-old cartoonist from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, noticed that Domino's Pizza Chile branch was using her funny comics on their Facebook page, she took action right away. After the initial silence, however, the company sent some messages that were a bit passive-aggressive, to say the least.
"I was shocked at first," Chen told Mashable. "I've dealt with plagiarism before but usually by small, random social media accounts or unknown websites. Nothing like this. This has been my biggest copyright infringement encounter yet." Chen, who has over 123,000 Instagram followers, shared a screenshot of the whole ordeal with her fans and it quickly went viral.
"I knew I needed as much support as I could get as I've never been in this position before," Chen explained. "There have been many other cases where big corporations have stolen artwork from indie artists, and most of the time, the cases never get resolved, leaving the artists defenseless and helpless. So, I was really concerned about that."
Scroll down to check out how the story of a villainous pizza restaurant and unpaid royalties unfolded!
Artist Weinye Chen confronted Domino's Pizza for plagiarism
After Domino's posted 'their' illustration on social media
Looks familiar? Here's the original work by Chen
Weinye took it to Facebook to explain that she wasn't asked for permission
And when the company was confronted by her, their response was the worst
The internet wasn't happy about it, too
Until Weinye finally took matters into her own hands
Let her explain how it unfolded
People had more to say about the ordeal
