Colorado potter's farting unicorn mug sparks feud with Elon Musk

A Colorado potter wants to be compensated for his work after he says Tesla's Elon Musk used his design of a farting unicorn without permission.  

Tom Edwards first put the artwork of the flatulent creature on a mug in 2010 and posted it to his website where he sells ceramics.

On one side of the mug there's a "whimsical, childlike cartoon" of a unicorn passing gas into a tube that goes into an electric car. On the other side it says, "electric cars are good for the environment because electricity comes from magic."

Edwards told As It Happens guest host Robyn Bresnahan that it was "great" when he learned that Musk, the founder of SpaceX, was a fan of his mug in a tweet in early 2017.

But after that, Edwards says he ran into problems.  

Edwards says the company "posted a blatant copy of the artwork on that mug and put it on the operating system of all of the Tesla automobiles."

The potter says his artwork was used on the car's touch screens, and was also used on a company Christmas card. 

"He did this without my permission." 

Edwards now has a lawyer who last month sent a letter to Tesla's general counsel requesting compensation for the use of the design. He says there has been no reply.

But when Edwards' daughter tweeted Musk earlier this week, accusing him of ripping off her dad, she got a response.

In a tweet screenshot by the BBC, Musk says the illustration with the Tesla sketch pad was done by someone else. He wrote that the image was "chosen randomly by software team as a joke (they didn't tell me in advance)," offering to "change it if your dad wants."

Edwards' daughter asked in another tweet if artists deserve to be paid for their work. 

Musk wrote, "he can sue for money if he wants, but that's kinda lame. If anything, this attention increased his mug sales."

In another tweet to a journalist, Musk said, "I offered to pay the guy who drew it twice already for something I don't even want."

All these tweets have since been deleted. 

Edwards denies Musk tried to pay him twice.

"That's completely erroneous. We've had no contact from him — and he has since deleted those tweets," he said.

"His attitude is exemplary of what corporate America thinks. They think they can just take artists' art, use it, and not ask permission. It's basic copyright law. That's what gets me about this whole thing."

"He's using my intellectual property in his automobile, and even if he were to take it down tomorrow, he still benefited from it," he said. "I think he should just stand up and do what's right."

Despite this, Edwards says he's still a fan of Musk. 

As It Happens has reached out to Tesla for comment on this story, but we have not heard back. 

This segment was produced by Alison Broverman. This segment was written by Katie Geleff.