The War:

A bunch of artists, including Chuck Close and the Sam Francis estate, sued Christies and Sotheby’s for millions of dollars in back royalties under the California Resale Royalty Act. This law obligates the buyer and dealer in a fine art sale to pay the artist 5% of the sale price.This law is the only one of its kind in the U.S.

The Winner:

Sotheby’s, Christies, Art Dealers Everywhere won (so far).

The federal District Court judge found the statute pushes its tentacles too far into interstate commerce, violating the “dormant” Commerce Clause.  Because the statute applies to transactions where either the artist lives or the sale takes place in California, she found its offending provisions too encompassing to save the statute. It didn’t help that the California legislators who created the law were on the record trying to impose royalty obligations on out of state sales.  The law – for now –is gone. Appeals may be on the way.

Moral of the Story

Galleries, Dealers and Auction Houses: Relax – you probably don’t have to pay royalties under the California Resale Royalty Act anytime soon.

State legislators: If you hope to regulate stuff outside your state, you don’t help your cause by sticking your hopes in the legislative record.

Here is the Opinion.

In 2000, a photographer named Patrick Cariou came out with a book of photographs he took during the 6 years when he lived with the Rastafarians in Jamaica.

In 2007, Richard Prince, along with his dealer, Gagosian Gallery, began exhibiting a series of collages that featured 41 photographs from Cariou’s book. Cariou sued Prince and Gagosian for copyright infringement. Prince and Gagosian claimed fair use.

Fair use is a frequently used excuse to infringement. Basically, the fair use defense says this:

Even though I borrowed your copyrighted work, it was fair use, so it wasn’t infringement. (more…)

bryancavecharitylaw.com/accepting-gifts-should-you

www.theartnewspaper.com/articles/Endowment+funds+flourish+in+France/21315

This exciting guide to IP entitled, Copyright: A Primer, was prepared by the Bryan Cave Intellectual Property Team. We hope it’s helpful.

Troy Klyber, lawyer at the Art Institute of Chicago, has written a terrific blog post about an odd (and sad) impact on artists who put a copyright notice on their work in the olden days as the law required. I sat on a speakers’ panel with Troy. He is one of the leading practical thinkers at the intersection of art and copyright.

Pablo Picasso once proclaimed, "we all know that art is not truth." When it comes to the world of fine art these days, truer words may have never be spoken.

Thanks to advances in global communication and technology, fine art forgeries have become big business. Currently, the FBI estimates that art theft, fraud, looting, and trafficking across state and international lines is a "looming criminal enterprise with estimated losses running as high as $6 billion annually." Indeed, crimes against art have become so popular that the FBI has a dedicated "Art Crime Team" comprised of 13 Special Agents responsible for investigating art crime and bringing criminals to justice.

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We mourn the passing of our client and friend Jeanne-Claude, co-artist of The Gates, Central Park, New York City, 1979-2005; Wrapped Reichstag Berlin, 1971-95; Surrounded Islands, Miami, Florida, 1980-83; and many other works of art and genius.

http://www.christojeanneclaude.net

Mark Twain channeled the frustration of many artists when he wrote, “Only one thing is impossible for God: To find any sense in any copyright law on the planet.” One such frustration is the realm of derivative works. Artists understand that all art is ultimately derivative. For example, Ernest Hemingway wrote, “All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn.”

But copyright law takes a narrower view, defining “derivative work” as “a work based upon one or more preexisting works, such as a translation, musical arrangement, dramatization, fictionalization, motion picture version, sound recording, art reproduction, abridgment, condensation, or any other form in which a work may be recast, transformed, or adapted.” 17 U.S.C. § 101.

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By Hope Wolman of Insurance Office of Central Ohio

There are many reasons, and these apply not just to art, but to silver, jewelry, musical instruments, wine and many fine things. We like to think about caring for your art and fine things, just like caring for your home. These things have significant value, and need a bit of attention. For our purposes today Coco, I will just address art.

1. Most policies have limits on what you can recover for certain classes of property. Any many policies have exclusions for the breakage of fragile articles. So if you spend money on buying art, you want it protected; you don’t want to have a loss that is unrecoverable. Moreover, insuring certain art often costs less than insuring general contents.

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