Showing items tagged "Copyright, IP and artist rights"
When I Paint My Masterpiece
Damien Hirst sculptures made by preserving animals in formaldehyde were dated by his company to the 1990s even though they were made in 2017, an investigation by the UK’s Guardian newspaper alleged in March 2024.…
Political Statements
The year 2024 has been described as being ‘the ultimate election year’, when more people than ever in history may vote in national polls for their governments and leaders: in over 70 countries worldwide, representing 49% of the…
Freedom and Creativity
2024 started with publication of a seminal judicial decision confirming that UK copyright law’s originality test – for creating a copyright protected new artwork – requires the expression of personal creativity by the author; and that this…
Digital Single Market
On 13 February 2019 in Strasbourg the EU agreed to introduce new copyright rules to create a fair, transparent and predictable business environment for users of online platforms. Key features of these rules include new exceptions to…
Love & Money
There has been an unprecedented amount of media coverage of Banksy’s Girl with Balloon (2006) shredding incident since it took place at Sotheby’s London’s evening sale of contemporary art on 5 October 2018. But none of this…
Style, Content and Plagiarism
‘Cultural appropriation’, ‘unethical borrowing’, ‘plagiarism’ and ‘rip off’ are recent headline grabbing media comments criticising a photoshoot of Rihanna published in Vogue Paris in December 2017. In July 2018, Twitter user STEVE JXSEPH @STEVEJXSEPH posted on…
Conservation Questions
Ethical practices of art conservation have become a renewed subject of debate following publication of a pre conservation image of Salvator Mundi, c1500, which was recently attributed to Leonardo da Vinci and subsequently sold for $450m at auction…
Fair Image Use Fees
Just as the industrial revolution radically transformed the world during the 18th and 19th centuries, the digital revolution is affecting most areas of life in the 21st century. Keeping pace with the exponential growth and global…
Idea/Expression Dichotomy
This year marks the centenary of the creation of a work widely accepted as the most influential of the 20th century: Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain, 1917. This readymade and its reception heralded the transformation of modern and contemporary art…
A Landmark Case?
Can the integrity of publicly sited sculpture be damaged by siting another object close to it? Think of landmark works such as Antony Gormley’s Angel of the North, 1988, or Andy Scott’s Kelpies, 2013: would their integrity…
Fair Use
The Robert Rauschenberg Foundation recently announced a new Fair Use policy to make images of the artist’s work more accessible to museums, scholars, artists and the public (Artnotes AM395). This enlightened and innovative approach represents the first artist’s…
Christoph Büchel v Mass MoCA
In September 2007 a US court gave judgement in an unprecedented case that focused on the meaning of authorship. It concerned an installation, Training Ground For Democracy, commissioned by the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art…
Can I sell an artwork that uses letters from an existing font, e.g. from a word processing program?
There are two key legal issues to consider here: whether the work will infringe copyright and the terms of the licence under…
Can I illustrate a mass-produced object such as a toy in an artwork without infringing copyright laws?
The answer is highly complex but an indication of the issues involved is given by the following simplified comments on a highly complex…
Merchandising Rights Time Bomb
When an artwork is mass produced in three dimensions by or with the artist’s permission, UK law substantially reduces the artist’s copyright protection in the future. This rule is a time bomb: it operates only 25…
Small Claims
The knowledge economy is evolving into the network economy. Traditional business practices are rapidly changing accordingly. But the machinery of governments and legislatures grind at a much slower pace, often rendering business rules and regulations unfit for purpose.…
Changes to Permitted Uses
Changes to copyright law came into force in the UK on 1 June 2014, and implement policies developed by the EU aimed at facilitating use of creative works in the post digital age. UK’s Copyright, Designs…
Post-Internet Art
The World Wide Web is 25 years old this year. UK computer scientist Tim Berners Lee first proposed the concept in March 1989, and by November that year he had achieved the first Internet communication between a Hypertext…