Riot Copyright Strikes Small Artist For Using The Word "Arcane" In Her Work

thegamer.com:

An artist from Ukraine has had her work removed from TeePublic following a copyright claim from Riot Games. This is despite the work being from the artist's original creation, with Riot's legal team seemingly targeting the small creator because of the use of the word "Arcane".

Riot has admitted that the takedown notice was "made in error", yet the work in question is still unavailable at the time of writing. This also raises concerns for other independent artists, as this issue was only addressed by the company after it gained traction on Twitter.

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"Riot Games claimed that my original artwork is their intellectual property", wrote artist KuttySark. "I'm just some girl from Ukraine and have no voice if such a big company as Riot Games claims that my work belongs to them, even if all facts prove them wrong."

The takedown went ahead despite it being easily verifiable that KuttySark's work was created long before Arcane premiered on Netflix last year. It was first uploaded to Tumblr, with the timestamp indicating that it was shared in 2018. That's not to mention that the actual art on the t-shirt doesn't depict an Arcane character at all, rather it features the name of KuttySark's original story, Arcane Flames.

Fans quickly rallied behind the artist, flooding Riot's Twitter replies with requests to look into the matter. The studio has since issued a statement, explaining that "there are a number of teams and third party agencies working to protect our IP", distancing itself from the takedown. The League of Legends developer confirmed that it was aware of the issue and that the takedown must have been issued in error. It closes off the statement saying: "We apologize for