It appears the Grand Prize winner wasn’t the only plagiarizer.
Since the release of the initial article surrounding the controversy over the Grand Prize winner of the Uniqlo T-shirt competition, a second report has come out surrounding one of the other finalists. Uniqlo and The Pokemon Company have disqualified a finalist from England for breaking the rules. While it is unclear at this time exactly what rules were violated, rumors are circulating that this design was stolen as well, with some users stating the design used to belong to GameTeeUK, though this is unconfirmed at the time of writing this article.
Overall, it appears that the vetting process was not very well done prior to this contest, and there have been calls for the competition to take place again with stricter background checks or at the very least be re-judged to give the artists that didn’t plagiarize a fair chance. What are your thoughts? Do you believe stricter background checks could have prevented this? And in light of a similar controversy surrounding one of the Detective Pikachu poster winners from a few months back, what other changes do you think could be made to prevent future plagiarism in these competitions?
