Earlier this month, retail chain H&M filed a lawsuit that seemed poised to address a central question about how copyright law applies to illegal graffiti.  But following a public-relations backlash, H&M has apparently abandoned the suit, leaving these legal waters uncharted for now.

New Mexico jewelry merchant Nael Ali will soon become the first person ever sentenced under the Indian Arts and Crafts Act (“IACA”), a decades-old federal law that prohibits the sale of fake Native American goods.

This week, artist Lina Iris Victor filed a federal lawsuit in the Southern District of New York alleging that her copyrights in three original artworks were infringed in the music video (link here) of a new song, “All the Stars,” which is featured on the soundtrack of the new Marvel movie Black Panther.

​This week, a federal judge awarded a total of $6.75m to the 21 graffiti-artist plaintiffs whose works were destroyed in the now-famous 5Pointz case.

In a lengthy opinion issued earlier this week, Judge Loretta A. Preska of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York ruled that the Metropolitan Museum of Art may keep a noteworthy Picasso artwork, even though its German-Jewish former owners sold it for a fraction of its actual value to finance their safe passage out of fascist Italy.

Canadian art gallery Equinox Gallery Limited (“Equinox”) will be allowed to move forward with its lawsuit against art dealer Fred Dorfman following a favorable decision from a federal judge this week.  Grossman LLP is representing Equinox in the case.
 

Even when it comes to parodies, fair use litigation is rarely a cut-and-dried slam-dunk.

Current events are sparking a larger conversation about the role of museums and their responsibilities to the communities in which they reside and to the public at large.

A new lawsuit by a tattoo artist against the makers of a popular video game series may explore some interesting questions about how U.S. copyright law applies to tattoos.

Back in 2015, during the Obama Administration, we wrote about a tax proposal that could have eliminated a federal tax code mechanism frequently used by art investors to defer tax consequences from art transactions.  Ultimately, that proposal did not become law.  But now, a recently-released tax plan offered by Congressional Republicans could put the same mechanism back on the chopping block, at least in terms of art deals.  And if the plan becomes law, this change could have major implications for the high-end art market.

In a new lawsuit, the estate of American artist James Castle is suing publisher Scholastic and author/illustrator Allen Say over a forthcoming book about the artist, which the estate claims infringes on the copyrights of dozens of Castle works. 

If you rode the New York City subway’s Flushing-bound Number 7 Line before 2013, you probably recall the elevated train snaking through 5Pointz, a group of Long Island City warehouses emblazoned with colorful graffiti.  After years of protracted litigation, a trial is now underway in Brooklyn federal district court that will determine whether federal law affords the artists who created 5Pointz a legal right to the graffiti.    

As the holiday season approaches, a federal court in New York has issued an opinion regarding a parody of Dr. Seuss’s classic children’s book, How the Grinch Stole Christmas—and in the process, has reaffirmed how the fair-use doctrine in copyright law relates to parodies of copyrighted works.

A lawsuit filed in Manhattan federal district court last week reveals how Bernard Madoff’s nearly decade-old Ponzi scheme continues to reverberate, even in the art world.

Famed artist Richard Prince is no stranger to litigation; over the years, he’s been sued by multiple plaintiffs whose art he has incorporated into his own “appropriation art” works.  A few years ago, he was the defendant in the Cariou v. Prince case, which resulted in an important Second Circuit Opinion about the fair-use defense to copyright infringement.

Earlier this summer, a New York state court published a written opinion granting summary judgment to famed artist, Peter Beard, in an important lawsuit that will cause art-market participants to think twice before entering into hand-shake deals. Grossman LLP filed this suit on behalf of Beard and his eponymous Studio against a group of defendants led by art collector Bernie Chase. Beard’s complaint alleged that during a series of interactions in the fall of 2013, Chase had taken possession of three artworks created by Beard, without permission from or compensation to Beard, and further, that Chase and his co-defendants had then marketed the works for sale at a New York gallery partially owned by Chase (and in fact had succeeded in selling one of the three pieces). 

In our ongoing coverage of case law involving Nazi-looted artworks, we have written before about the long-running lawsuit over a Pissarro painting, Rue St. Honore, après midi, effet de pluie. Back in 2015, we wrote about a district-court decision that dealt a possibly-fatal blow to the claimants, who were seeking to recover the work from a collection controlled by the Spanish government. Earlier in July, however, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed that decision, meaning the painting’s claimants can continue their fight in the federal courts.

The U.S. Supreme Court has granted certiorari in Rubin v. Islamic Republic of Iran, a case out of the Seventh Circuit regarding the ability to execute on a judgment by seizing Iranian artifacts held in American museums. The case will likely resolve a circuit split over whether victims of state-sponsored terrorism can collect on judgments by targeting assets of the foreign state held in the United States, even if those assets are otherwise protected by the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (FSIA).

Convicted forger Vincent Lopreto has been arrested again in connection with forged artworks, having allegedly commenced another art-fraud scheme just weeks after his release from a two-year prison sentence for a similar crime.

Andrew Hall will be able to pursue his suit against Lorettann and Nikolas Gascard, who Hall alleges sold forgeries of paintings by American artist Leon Golub. Hall sued the former art-history professor and her son last fall in federal district court in New Hampshire, claiming that he purchased twenty-four works, either directly from the Gascards or indirectly through auction houses. Hall sued the Gascards for fraud, seeking the return of the approximately $700,000 purchase price for the works.