SIGGRAPH'97 used my artwork (Vibrant Drive), without my permission, in the printed and the PDF versions of the Advance Program (ref1) of the annual conference, on its web pages (ref2) and on promotional merchandise (ref3).   There, the original image was heavily manipulated as you can see in the reference pages.

In June, 1997, I claimed that all my images and the derivatives must be removed from all SIGGRAPH promotion materials, and asked for a retroactive license fees for the unauthorized reproduction.   And I also requested SIGGRAPH to acknowledge it's unauthorized use in its publications.   We didn't reach at an agreement in two month email talks and this conflict was passed to the lawyers for further negotiation.   As we could not agree on the language by which SIGGRAPH would acknowledge its unauthorized use in its publicatons, a Complaint was filed to a US district court in New York in February 1998.

Defendants made Offer of Judgment in May, 1998, to permit judgment to be taken against them on all claims.   I accepted the Offer of Judgment(ref4) and on May 19, 1998, a Consent Judgment was filed in the United States District Court.

VIBRANT DRIVE (Copyright 1991 Yoshiyuki Abe)

ref1 (cover 1, cover 2, page 1) ref2 (examples of fragment used on its web pages) ref3 (mouse pad, beach towel, tee shirt) ref4 (Consent Judgment)