Volkswagen, the German corporation with the "Beetle" car, is apparently severely bugged by online images of beetles, the six-legged type.
A takedown order from a retail website was involved, a response from the artists' lawyer and much more.
The story comes through the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a free-speech advocate.
"Peggy Muddles is a scientist and an artist who marries her two lives by making science-themed art," the group said. "Among her many digital prints are a number of works featuring beetles – the type of insect."
And that artwork on the retail site Red Bubble was something Volkswagen was not going to allow.
EFF, which calls itself the leading "nonprofit defending digital privacy, free speech and innovation," said in a blog post Monday the artist got a takedown notice "for her rove beetle art."
"Now the rove beetle is a common insect found throughout Europe," it said.
"A Volkswagen Beetle is a car.
"Volkswagen, it turns out, does not own beetles the insect, the largest group of animals on this planet. Nor does it own rove beetles, the largest group of beetles alive. And it does not own the depiction of the species Paederus fuscipes, the species Muddles depicted in her art," EFF said.
And RedBubble, in fact, has lots of beetle images.
Muddles found a lawyer and wrote a response to try to have her work restored to RedBubble.
But she got more takedown notices.
"Faced with the takedown of prints titled 'Buprestic rufipes - red-legged Buprestis beetle' and 'Rhipicera femoralis - feather horned beetle' (you can see how Volkswagen got confused and thought these were prints of cars), Muddles once again went to her lawyer," EFF said.
This time her lawyer sent a note arguing that "the beetles that are the subject matter of our client's works of art evolved over 300 million years ago, pre-dating the fine motor vehicles manufactured by your company by approximately 300 million years."
Muddles told EFF, "The next morning we had an apology and my listings were reinstated."
She said she doesn't make a huge amount of money from the sales site, but the extra income helps.
EFF said it was concerned that the retail site didn't respond adequately, and Volkswagen should have had someone look at the site rather than rely on search results.
"This kind of story really bugs. And, in case Volkswagen is reading, that’s in the colloquial sense, not the car."