Odd Todd Robbed?

June spotted these Weber grill ads on TV and thought they looked a little familiar. They style mimics Odd Todd, the guy who made Flash cartoons about being unemployed, to a tee. June isn’t the only one to see this, gigglechick.com saw it and emailed Todd to see if he was involved. According to her site, he says he didn’t have anything to do with it, which is a real shame.

The alternative way to go about this is what happened with Quiznos. Their ads feature rathergood.com’s Spongmonkeys singing about how much they love Quiznos subs. Slate has all the background info on the Quiznos ads, but what’s important is that they supported the original artist.
I talk a lot about copyright reform and how people should release things under Creative Commons licenses or not employ invasive copyright protections. The Odd Todd case highlights the other side of the copyright bargain, something all creators are in danger of if copyright were eradicated. Something for the people who want to abolish all intellectual property (a minority of copyright reformists) should consider: that corporations can misappropriate copyrights just as well as file sharers. (For reference, the NC license would allow the public more rights with a work while still requiring payment if the work was used in an ad)
There is one bit of validation in these ads, however. Both Odd Todd and the Spongmonkeys are creations by and for the web culture, and there must be a culture here. Otherwise, how could advertisers steal apply or reference it?