Thank you Lady A for posting this in one of your comments.
Joapa calls it a "communication failure". I'm sure. It's a failure because there was likely no effort to communicate in the first place.
This takes us to an uncharted territory of fan copyright. There's a great article about it on Plagiarism Today. Here's short screen shot.
Lady Gaga's has got quite the selection of Born This Way merchandise that fans can buy at her show. One which she tweeted are her meat bandages. The picture was designed by a fan Joapa who calls the picture Chibi Gaga.
Joapa's drawn some really cute cartoons of Gaga and when he saw one of them used on the bandages he questioned on his blog "why didn't I get credit'?
Joapa makes it very clear that he's honored that his work was used by Stefani but he wants her to know where it came from and naturally wants to be credited. He also makes it clear that he's not angry with Stefani and isn't even sure if she knew it was his creation.
Fine.
But did Gaga even bother to try to find out? Who knows. That didn't stop her though. She still went ahead and used the picture anyway.
No doubt after hearing about the copyright issue, Gaga's team contacted Joapa. Using Google translate, he says this on his blog.
First I want to thank everyone who supported me in case Chibi Gaga. I was shocked when I saw the tweet announcing the product Gaga's official merchandising Born This Way Ball Tour with my drawing printed on the can of bandaids. I was somewhat annoyed when it has not received due credit for that use, but thanks to the buzz that I and others did little monsters, all ended well. This post is to clarify this. The office and merchandising team responsible for Lady Gaga contacted me and resolve this issue amicably. It was a communication failure that has already cleared up my credits and guaranteed corrigimos.Terei this product and will be paid for permission to use my drawing Chibi Gaga. My request was granted and I consider myself satisfied with the result! in the end, everything ended happily! :) The cans with the Chibi dressings are expected to be sold in 3 months! Again thank you to everyone who supported me and helped me this time!
Joapa calls it a "communication failure". I'm sure. It's a failure because there was likely no effort to communicate in the first place.
This takes us to an uncharted territory of fan copyright. There's a great article about it on Plagiarism Today. Here's short screen shot.
Do you think this was a harmless oversight by Stefani and her team? Or in the age of Twitter and Facebook, could she have easily posted the picture and asked "Who did this? I want to use your work. Let's talk?"
