Jody Hartman was surprised when a friend texted him a picture of a J. Crew Factory T-shirt with a graphic of two dogs that looked startlingly like his Labrador retrievers, Stella and Mabel, frolicking in a pile of leaves.

It didn’t take long for others to take notice — messages of congratulations started flooding in.

Hartman, 41, of Freeport, runs a popular social media account, Dog Named Stella, that features the antics of his two yellow labs — most notably, videos of the pups exuberantly leaping into massive leaf piles each fall.

The account has nearly 3 million followers across Instagram, Facebook, Tiktok and YouTube.

So when the popular clothing retailer debuted a children’s long-sleeved shirt with two light-colored dogs — one peeking out of a leaf pile and the other diving in — many assumed it was a collaboration between J. Crew and Dog Named Stella.

It isn’t.

“J. Crew is selling this shirt. They are making a lot of money off it and we did not collaborate with them in any way whatsoever,” Hartman said in an Oct. 24 post. “I am very aware that I do not own all imagery of dogs in leaf piles, but this … this is something. I’ll leave it at that.”

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The similarities between the J. Crew shirt and Hartman’s dogs have generated attention online, with many encouraging Hartman to seek legal action for copyright infringement.

It’s an issue that, with the proliferation of social media, legal professionals are seeing “more often than we’d like,” said Alexandra Roberts, a professor of law and media at Northeastern University. 

More and more, independent content creators are seeing imitations of their work (some more blatant than others) appear in stores without credit. And they can be difficult cases to prove.

‘COULD GO EITHER WAY’

Hartman said he and his family are “weighing our options,” but that he can’t afford to take on a retail monolith like J. Crew.

He reached out to the company, addressing the similarities, but it allegedly denied any connection to his content and said the dogs in its graphic are golden retrievers, a claim Hartman dismissed in an interview as “just silly.”

The company did not answer a reporter’s questions Tuesday about the shirt and its resemblance to Stella and Mabel.

Legally, Hartman became the copyright owner of the videos as soon as they were posted, but without the additional protection of a registered copyright through the U.S. Copyright Office, he can’t file a lawsuit, according to Roberts.

While he could still file for the registration, Hartman said he’d likely have to copyright multiple videos and it could get expensive quickly. The Dog Named Stella logo is trademarked.

“I’m really just hoping that J. Crew addresses it and makes a donation to some sort of pet cause, some shelter or something like that,” he said.

According to Roberts, in copyright cases, courts look at whether the accused party had easy access to the copyrighted content, (which, she said, is likely in this scenario since Dog Named Stella has such a large following), and whether there’s “substantial similarity” between the two works.

“I don’t think it’s super clear cut in this situation,” Roberts said, noting that ideas are not protectable. 

“The idea of two dogs playing in a pile of leaves … everyone has the ability to use that general concept, (but) I think Dog Named Stella makes a compelling case by morphing the photo” of the shirt into an image of Stella, she said. 

In a video posted Nov. 13, Hartman superimposed a picture of the shirt over a photo of Stella.

“Note the exact lines on Stella’s forehead and face,” the text of the video reads.

However, there are other details that are different. The dogs on the shirt have shaggier ears, a slightly different tail, meaning J. Crew could argue that the artist took enough creative license. Plus, Stella and Mabel are purebred Labradors — they lack the distinctive features of some well-known pets, like “Grumpy Cat.”

“It’s a case that could go either way in the legal analysis,” Roberts said. 

‘NOT GREAT OPTICS’

Similar cases are often unsuccessful, Roberts said, because the legal fees to take on a major company are “tremendous,” and a retailer like J. Crew can afford to drag things out. 

What the company might not be able to afford, she said, is the hit to its reputation. 

“It’s not great optics. It would be a great reason for J. Crew to think about apologizing or offering to make some sort of deal,” she said. 

When people have been following an account for a long time — up to 10 years, for some of Stella’s earliest fans — they become invested, Roberts said, and they “don’t take too kindly” to seeing them wronged, whether justifiably or not.

Stella’s followers have flooded J. Crew’s social media posts, telling the retailer to “make it right.”

“WOW, I was almost excited and ready to purchase until I read what happened!!!!” one commenter said on Hartman’s Nov. 13 post. “This is totally your pups! Not cool J. Crew MAKE IT RIGHT!!!”

“I thought you were announcing a collaboration with J. Crew when I first saw this post because it is unmistakably Stella and Mabel in one of their beloved leaf piles,” another said. “So disappointing to see a large company take advantage of others. Shame on them.”

Hartman said he wasn’t surprised by the fervor with which fans came to his defense. 

“Our fans are very engaged,” he said, “and my whole goal with content creation is to evoke emotion.”

Usually, that emotion is joy. The videos are often silly, but Hartman has also shared more intimate parts of their lives, like the death of his father or his son’s surgery. 

“People feel like they know Stella and Mabel through our content, people feel like they know our family,” he said.