Copyright Law

Ethics

Posted on July 09, 2008
The "Ethicist" column in last Sunday's New York Times Magazine posed the following question:"My friend, a young artist at the start of his career, offered to sell me a 1 percent share in him for $9,000. I would receive a portion of his lifetime earnings but would have no say in the sort of work he did...

ARIS in The Sun

Posted on July 09, 2008
Kate Taylor has a story in tomorrow's New York Sun on art title insurance, which at the moment is still being offered by just one company, ARIS. She slots me in as a "skeptic":"Of course, there are skeptics. The author of the Art Law Blog, Donn Zaretsky, said in an e-mail that he would be concerned about what he called the adverse selection problem ? namely, that 'the people who buy the coverage are more likely to be people who have a reason to be concerned about possible defects in title (and may in fact be acting on information they have but the insurer does not)...

"A mural is created in 1940 under a work for hire, but the work is not published . . ."

Posted on July 09, 2008
". . . The author of the mural dies in 1950. What is the term of [copyright] protection?"Bill Patry poses the question. A consensus emerges in the comments.

"He began to believe in his own mythology"

Posted on July 09, 2008
Judd Tully on Ralph Esmerian's (many) legal troubles.

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"Experts say it could be a year before the case goes to trial and that Cutler and Solomon have already spent more than the painting?s estimated value"

Posted on July 09, 2008
The Las Vegas Sun's Kristen Peterson has an entertaining update on the battle over a stolen Rockwell painting that ended up in Steven Spielberg's hands. I posted some thoughts about the case a little over a year ago. I think the issue still is going to be whether Solomon, the theft victim, reasonably should have discovered that the painting had been found back in 1989 (in which case he would lose on statute of limitations grounds)...

"It's a victory for booksellers and the arts community but most importantly for the First Amendment"

Posted on July 03, 2008
That's the Indianapolis Museum of Art's Maxwell Anderson on the news that a federal court has ruled unconstitutional an Indiana law requiring bookstores and other retailers to register with the state if they sell "sexually explicit" material. Stories here and here...

"In case authentication groups don?t have enough troubles . . ."

Posted on July 03, 2008
Josh Baer reports that "Donald Frangipani has sued HBO, Bryant Gumbel and others for 'defamation and RICO action arising from fraudulent statements concerning plaintiff?s previous authentication of (sports) memorabilia' for $5 million."More here from the UPI.

"I plan to secure pledges from fifty living American artists for one important work from their own collections that they would donate to a museum"

Posted on June 30, 2008
That's ADAA president Roland Augustine's plan for convincing Congress to (finally) enact legislation permitting artists to get an income tax deduction when they donate their (own) artwork to museums. Daniel Grant has the story here. I'm not sure how effective the plan will be: no one doubts that changing the law would result in increased donations from artists...

eBay and Fakes

Posted on June 30, 2008
Time magazine reports that a Paris court has ordered eBay "to pay $63 million in damages to units of the Paris-based luxury goods mammoth LVMH, after agreeing that the site had facilitated the sale of counterfeit versions of its high-end products, particularly Louis Vuitton luggage...

"What if all of this effort, time, and money spent over the past three years scaring visual artists into legislative action . . .

Posted on June 30, 2008
. . . was instead spent solving the key problems that the constituency is complaining about?" Public Knowledge's Alex Curtis on the orphan works legislation.

Arrest in Monet Theft

Posted on June 30, 2008
Bloomberg's Philip Boroff reports that "a Frenchman living in Florida was charged with attempting to sell a Clause Monet painting and three other artworks stolen at gunpoint last year from the Museum of Fine Arts in Nice, France."

Explosive Theory

Posted on June 30, 2008
From The Art Newspaper:"A former curator from the State Russian Museum in St Petersburg ... has developed a new method for dating paintings in collaboration with Russian scientists which, she says, provides 'indisputable' evidence of whether a painting was made before or after 1945...

"To paraphrase the eminent metaphysician L.P. Berra, an event has not concluded until all activity associated with that event has ceased."

Posted on June 30, 2008
One thing that remains unchanged after a week away at the beach: the Friends of the Barnes are still battling. Philadelphia Inquirer art critic Edward Sozanski sums up the state of play: "all that the Friends have left in what I expect will be a continuing guerrilla campaign is the moral argument...

Breaking

Posted on June 22, 2008
Off to the beach. Back next week.

"We recognized very well that the issue of standing, narrow as they were, did not favor us at all"

Posted on June 20, 2008
The Philadelphia Inquirer has a post-mortem on the latest round of litigation over the Barnes Foundation's move.

More on the new antiquities guidelines

Posted on June 18, 2008
Illicit cultural property go-to guy Derek Fincham weighs in on the new AAMD ethics guidelines for collecting antiquities: "Continued scrutiny of the antiquities trade is needed, despite these new ethical guidelines. I'm not sure much has really changed...

"In cases of armed robbery we can't run the risk of resisting, because there could be unforeseeable consequences for the employees and for the public"

Posted on June 17, 2008
Derek Fincham has more on last week's Picasso theft in Brazil. He notes the "inherent tension between keeping galleries an open space for the public versus protecting against armed robbery. Such robberies seem to be taking place with regularity in Sao Paulo though, which may make displaying art to the public more difficult there...

"Art in a Time of Terror"

Posted on June 17, 2008
Amy Goodman interviews artist Steve Kurtz. For some background on the Kurtz story, start here.

Not Appealing

Posted on June 16, 2008
It's official: the Barnes case is over. Lee Rosenbaum reports that today was the deadline for filing a notice of appeal from Judge Ott's latest ruling, and both Montgomery County and the Friends of the Barnes have decided not to pursue the case any further.

Larry Lessig has signed his first online petition in many years (UPDATED)

Posted on June 14, 2008
Against the proposed Orphan Works Act. The petition is here if you want to join him.UPDATE: I think it's safe to say Heather Hope will not be signing the petition: "I do not know all the ins-and-outs of the legislation, and maybe what is being proposed is not ideal...

Klimt Case

Posted on June 13, 2008
Josh Baer:"Maggie Wachter has sued Paul Quatrochi alleging he reneged over the $1.2 million purchase of a Klimt drawing and she has also sued Day & Meyer alleging they will not return the artwork to her."

Salander Update

Posted on June 12, 2008
Sunday is the deadline for submitting art claims in the Salander-O'Reilly bankruptcy. Bloomberg's Philip Boroff has the details.

"Lawyers for the men have said they did not realize the painting was famous when they took it"

Posted on June 12, 2008
The two guys who stole a Goya painting while it was on its way to the Guggenheim from the Toledo Museum of Art in 2006 were sentenced to federal prison yesterday. The ringleader (who also "had an extensive criminal record") got five years; his accomplice got a year and a day.

Another Picasso Theft

Posted on June 12, 2008
"Heavily armed robbers have stolen two engravings by Pablo Picasso from an art museum in downtown Sao Paulo."

"Obviously, they overpaid"

Posted on June 09, 2008
Bloomberg.com reports:"An auction of European and American furniture and garden decorations from bankrupt Salander-O'Reilly Galleries LLC brought in $1.6 million, as collectors, dealers and interior designers scooped up items for a fraction of what Lawrence Salander paid for them in 2004...

Served

Posted on June 09, 2008
A Harvard Law student has come up with a novel way of "bring[ing] out the flesh-and-blood ... life behind" the law. Via Tom Smith, who applauds the effort.

On Not Getting It

Posted on June 08, 2008
Carolyn Wright says supporters of the orphan rights legislation like me (I didn't know I was one!) "don't get it" when we point out that registration with the new electronic databases the legislation contemplates would not be required. While she concedes that the proposed legislation "does not make registration with the private registries mandatory," she nevertheless argues that "registration will be required if photographers want the same protection for their works as they have now" and that "the OW Act takes away the statutory damages option unless the photographer registers the work with the private registry/registries...

Art Law, Briefly

Posted on June 07, 2008
Lots of art law in the news the last few days:If the guards at LACMA tell you you're too close to an artwork, you'd better step back. Christopher Knight says "it's hard to imagine almost any scenario in which an art museum guard might shoot someone, but that bizarre thought keeps bumping around in your brain at BCAM...

Misconceptions

Posted on June 05, 2008
Rashmi Rangnath, a Staff Attorney at Public Knowledge, addresses one of the "misconceptions" about the orphan work reform proposals:"Let me be clear. The orphan works bills would not require owners to take any steps not already required by copyright law to be eligible for copyright protection...

"There's nothing in any post-9/11 law that restricts your right to photograph"

Posted on June 05, 2008
Glenn Reynolds on the increase in harassment of people taking pictures.

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