KUALA LUMPUR, Nov 2 — Pos Malaysia has removed all promotional posters of its new “Visit Malaysia Year 2014” stamp collection from its Facebook account, saying it is investigating claims that the stamp series featured stolen work.

Following an online storm over allegations of intellectual property theft, Pos Malaysia’s Stamp and Philately Unit also expressed hope that it would be able to resolve the matter by Monday.

In a series of replies to a query in the comments section of a late-night post on its Facebook account yesterday, the unit publicly assured a Facebook user that the scheduled release of the stamp collection during Stamp Week (November 13 to November 19) would not be delayed despite the allegations of plagiarism.

“At the moment no sir, we will hopefully can do this event & we are still investigating this case. Hopefully by next Monday, we will settle down this issue. TQ for your support & sorry for any inconvenience,” the unit said in an entry posted an hour or so before midnight.

The unit also indicated that the stamp collection could be issued with some changes to the images featured.

“At the moment we are trying to settle down (sic) this case, maybe there are a few changes on the stamp images,” it wrote in another reply to the same Facebook user.

By midnight yesterday, the entire photo album titled “Visit Malaysia Year 2014” was removed from the Stamp and Philately Unit’s Facebook account, along with an earlier post promoting the same stamp collection.

The photo album had featured promotional posters of new stamps in sets of six, with four different themes revolving around Malaysia’s birds, insects, plants and tourist spots.

Earlier this week, Filipino photographer Romy Ocon alleged that his image of a wild bird was used in Pos Malaysia’s stamp series without his permission.

In his complaint of the alleged copyright infringement, Ocon also said that the bird picture which he said bore a striking resemblance to his own image was wrongly labelled.

Pos Malaysia said it is investigating claims of plagiarism in its new stamp collection ‘Visit Malaysia Year 2014’ in a screen capture of the entry on the Stamp and Philately Unit’s Facebook account.

“It seems somebody has stolen one of my photos of a Long-tailed Shrike (Lanius schach), then used it erroneously as a photo of a White-fronted Falconet in a stamp issued by Malaysia!” he had written in a post on Digital Review Photography (DP Review)’s online forum on Wednesday, pointing out that both birds looked “very different”.

Contacted by The Malay Mail Online on Thursday, Ocon confirmed he had personally posted a complaint titled “My photo was stolen and used in a Malaysian stamp?” on DP Review and several other photography websites.

Claiming that the image of a white-chested bird in the “Visit Malaysia Year 2014” stamp series was virtually identical to his own work, Ocon provided a link which compared a cropped image of the bird in the Pos Malaysia poster against his “original” photograph.

“Many features and detail are identical, much like fingerprints,” he said in emailed remarks to The Malay Mail Online, with the comparison showing the two bird images allegedly sharing the same blemish at the upper beak, same wing details and identical tail details.

The bird on the Malaysian stamp — which was shown perching in a slightly-tilted position on a brown branch — purportedly had the same claw positions with Ocon’s image, while the pale watermark — placed slightly above the bird’s claws gripping a green stalk in his image — was allegedly “cloned out” or erased.

According to Ocon, other photographers in the DP Review forum that had carried out their own analyses said that both photographs are “the same image”.

“I’m confident that an analysis by independent experts will confirm the same. By the way, I have the RAW file of the image, so I can easily prove copyright ownership in any forum/ venue,” he said, referring to the original unprocessed image captured by digital cameras.

When contacted, Malaysian bird expert Andrew Sebastian said that the image of the bird in the stamp collection did not match the White-fronted Falconet label given.

Andrew, who is also Malaysian Nature Society (MNS)’s head of communications, said the Long-tailed Shrike which can be found in many countries was around 25 cm in size, whereas the White-fronted Falconet is endemic to Borneo and is “one of the smallest bird of prey in the world” at only 15 to 17 cm in size.

The Malay Mail Online has yet to receive a response from Pos Malaysia over this issue.