As I’ve said time and time again, and will keep saying, life in the grey market is never dull.
When else would you be accused of copyright infringement for posting a picture of a kit and someone’s fingers holding vial caps, or be threatened with a cease and desist over a name?
The copyright incident
This came off the back of the JEEP T30 orange cap endotoxin incident, which I covered extensively.
I found the original warning announcement in another forum. It had already been posted as a public safety notice and included photos of the kit and the two different shades of orange caps to help people identify whether they had the affected product. Those same images were already circulating across multiple forums.
I used them in my own article and social media for the same reason, to warn people and help them identify the kit.
Not long after posting on Substack, I received an official-sounding DM from the apparent owner of the photos, demanding they be removed, claiming copyright infringement and saying she had reported it to Substack. I removed them immediately. That part wasn’t the issue as I replaced them easily and even created an AI version to show the cap colour differences.
But what caught my attention was simple. In over two years of posting kit photos for public warnings, testing discussions, and community awareness, this was the first time anyone had raised an issue. So I wanted to understand why.
After I jokingly asked whether she intended to take me to court, her original message, which was quite aggressive, was deleted and replaced with a softer version, once she realised the images had already been removed. And suddenly it wasn’t about legal action anymore. It became about permission, courtesy and adding a disclaimer to say they were not my pictures.
When I pointed out that the same images were being used across other forums, the explanation shifted again.
She said she was fine with the photos being used for public safety elsewhere, just not where “some kind of income is generated.” So now we had the real issue. Not the images and not public safety, but the assumption that I was making money from them. So I asked her to show evidence which of course she couldn’t.
After pushing further, she admitted she had never even heard of me before that day. The claim that I was making money was simply an assumption, because “that’s usually the case.”
That’s the part that irritated me. If someone wants their images removed, fine. Ask and I’ll remove them, but don’t lead with legal threats, make assumptions about my income and then walk it back when challenged.
And don’t position it as a matter of consent when those same images are acceptable everywhere else, including platforms like GLP1 Forum where vendors pay thousands to advertise, but suddenly become a problem when used in my article.
She later admitted she’d given permission to the person who originally posted them, to post them on the various forums. So this was someone who knew nothing about me, yet still felt comfortable making assumptions. That was my real issue, not removing the images.
However, this incident does raise a simple question:
Who actually controls images once they’ve been circulated publicly across forums, sales posts, and community warnings?
And why does that answer seem to change depending on who is using them? Needless to say i was never contacted by Substack.
The “K-Hole” trademark
This next incident happened months earlier and this one is laughable too. A particularly bitter Tik Toker decided she was going to “take” the name K-Hole away from me.
Her plan?
She created 3D printed keychains using the K-Hole name, filed a trademark, and then tried to use that to force me to stop using it. Rather than cause a reaction from me, all I did was to sit back and watch. At one point she even posted a TikTok claiming:
“it is approved” and that I would have two weeks to remove K-Hole from everything. She tried to make it sound serious, but it really wasn’t.
From what was actually filed, it was just a US application in a narrow class (3D printed goods / keychains) which didn’t not cover communities, servers, or content, wasn’t global and wasn’t immediate either. Even without legal advice, I knew this was BS. That’s not how any of this works.
The reality
Trademark rights depend on where you operate, how the name is used and who used it first. In many cases, prior use creates common law rights. Registrations are limited by category and geography and filing something doesn’t mean you suddenly control a name everywhere. So I did nothing and like most things built on smoke rather than substance, it went away. Just like she did.
Where the name “K-Hole” came from
For anyone curious, my server was originally called K Server. People who didn’t like me started calling it K-Hole in a derogatory way, but I kind off took a shine to it and so I adopted it.
Final point
These incidents are almost laughable, only in this space would you see copyright claims over widely shared photos of kits from China and trademark attempts based on cheap 3D keychains. All just to try and control something that was already out there and because people didn’t like me.
Anyway, any lawyers out there…………..?
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