CASE FILE

CHAPTER 4.2

THE MYSTERIOUS IMAGE

Though startled, Jungkook decided not to interrupt Baek Kyung’s story. He was already taking a magazine called Nightlife out of his portfolio.

Baek opened the magazine to a full-color advertisement. Pictorially, it was almost an exact duplicate of the layout he had just shown them! Chaeyoung could hardly believe her eyes. This, too, showed a fashion model posed like the Statue of Liberty atop a marble column. The only difference was that she was wearing a beautiful white fur coat rather than a white evening gown.

“Amazing!” murmured Jungkook. “Do you know exactly when this one was photographed?”

Baek Kyung shook his head glumly. “No, I’ve never been able to pin that down. All that mattered was that it got published before mine.”

“Was there any accusation of copying?” Jungkook asked.

“Not at that time. Of course it caused a lot of talk in advertising circles, and it was mighty embarrassing for me. But I guess most people were willing to put it down to coincidence. But now let me show you what happened next.”

Again Baek pulled a large, colorful ad layout from his portfolio. This one showed several knights in armor seated with raised flagons at a round dining-room table of lustrous mahogany. The picture was captioned: Styled for the Ages!

“About ten days before this was published in Modern Life magazine,” Baek went on, “a similar ad appeared in Decor magazine.”

He took out the latter and opened it to the advertisement in question. This, too, featured a round table and knights, posed almost identically to those in Baek’s layout, and was headed: Our Furniture Never Goes Out of Fashion!

“This case of duplication,” said Baek, “occurred about two or three months after the first instance that I just showed you concerning the Statue of Liberty layout.”

“Same photographer?” asked Chaeyoung.

“No, a different photographer and a different ad agency. But this one didn’t get by so easily. The rival agent went to the Advertising Council and charged the agency I was working for with ethical misconduct. In plain English, they claimed their ad had been copied,” Baek said in a bitter voice.
“As it turned out, the dispute was settled quietly—which didn’t help me. By now my reputation was really hurting. Twice in a row seemed a little too much to be called a coincidence. A good many people were ready to believe that I’d deliberately stolen someone else’s idea. And my problems still weren’t over! "

Once again the famed photographer took out an example of his work and an almost identical advertisement that had appeared before his own was published. This was the instance that Chaeyoung had told Jungkook about at the breakfast table—a cosmetics ad featuring models’ faces superimposed on flowers.

“I shot mine early this spring,” said Baek, “but the other was published two weeks before mine, in a different magazine.”
Chaeyoung and Jungkook exchanged baffled glances.

“And this is the one that caused the lawsuit?” the girl inquired.
“Right.” Baek nodded and rose abruptly to begin pacing about the lawyer’s office.

“Mind you, I don’t blame the other agency a bit. It does look like outright copying—a plain case of artistic theft.” He punched his fist into his open palm, adding, “And I’m at a total loss to explain it!”