The Ugly Side of Crafts

One of the downsides of becoming better known as an artist is sometimes people get jealous or rankled. So I woke up to an email from a disgruntled artist who swears I saw one of his hats and now make hats just like his.  First off his designs are very complicated so there is no way I could just look at it on youtube and then duplicate it. I may be good but I'm not that good.  I saw a concept and ran with it.  You can't trademark a concept. I can't tell people 'look, I made an outrageous hat, so you can't make one'. He's known about me for two years, so why is he just now bringing it to my attention?  Plus I tried to send lots of business his way by mentioning him in one of my articles.  A good deed never goes unpunished I suppose.  I've had over a million hits on my Hubpage articles, so most people would be thrilled if I gave them a nod and said, 'Go see that guy, he's great." I certainly didn't mean him any harm. Two freeform hats are never exactly alike, so you can't run around saying 'you copied me.'