Two pending cases present opposite but equally curious issues of art authentication by a living artist.  In one, the artist Peter Doig is being sued because he disavowed authorship of a work that a collector says is by Doig; in the other, an artist claims authorship over works that another man claims to have forged.  Both cases pose interesting questions about who, if not the artist, is the final say on whether an artwork is by the artist’s hand.

As we’ve discussed on this blog before, infringement of copyrighted works posted online is rampant, rendering artists marketing through social media vulnerable to infringement of their intellectual property.  A recent case highlights this risk to photographers posting their works online.

This summer has brought several stories about the continuing and complex efforts to address the painful impact of Nazi Germany and World War II on the world’s cultural heritage and the global art market.

A dispute between two powerful figures in the international art world has been playing out on a global stage for months.  Now, a major auction house has been dragged into the fray, sparking even more debate about the role of confidentiality in a market that often operates with minimal transparency and places a premium on secrecy.

While this blog often writes about the “fair use” defense in federal copyright law, we also frequently take note of cases that grapple with larger questions about copyrightability—that is, whether a work is covered by copyright protection at all.  In that vein, the Supreme Court announced earlier this month that it will review a Sixth Circuit decision regarding a thorny issue of copyrightability, in a case that may have implications across the art, fashion, and design industries.

Appropriation art is back in the news, as two of the biggest names in the field navigate the latest legal claims filed against them.
A few months ago, we wrote about a new lawsuit filed against Jeff Koons over his appropriation of a photograph from a 1980s liquor advertisement.  The defendants in the case (Koons and auction house Phillips) filed answers to the complaint, but in mid-April, the parties informed the court that they had reached a settlement, and the case is now closed.  But shortly after the Koons complaint was filed, another giant of appropriation art, Richard Prince, was haled into court for his latest dance on the line between fair use and copyright infringement. 

The art-law community pays close attention to legal developments in the copyright arena, including cases involving the fair use defense to copyright infringement. This blog has been watching the Google Books litigation unfold for years; the case deals with whether Google’s ambitious project—in which the search engine company has undertaken a massive initiative to scan, digitize, index, and make publicly available short “snippets” of millions of books, many of which are still under copyright—constitutes infringement of the copyrights in those works. 

This blog has previously covered the ongoing litigation concerning California’s Resale Royalties Act (CRRA).  A federal district court recently struck down the state statute on the grounds that it is preempted by federal copyright law, dealing a heavy blow to artists seeking royalties in connection with the resales of their artworks.

After a long legal battle in multiple federal courts, the University of Oklahoma has reached a settlement regarding a claimant’s attempts to recover a Nazi-looted artwork by celebrated Expressionist painter Camille Pissarro.
We have previously written about this case, which involves a claim by 75-year-old Leone Meyer, who says that the painting, La Bergère Rentrent des Moutons (“Shepherdess Bringing in Sheep”), was stolen from her family by the Nazi regime during World War II. 

Move over, graffiti art—the next frontier in federal copyright litigation may be tattoo art.  A lawsuit filed in federal court last month seeks to enforce the intellectual property rights of a group of tattoo artists who created tattoos on several pro basketball stars; the complaint alleges that those rights were infringed when defendants, creators of the video game “NBA 2K16,” incorporated images of the players—including their tattoos—into the game.  See Solid Oak Sketches, LLC v. Visual Concepts LLC et al., S.D.N.Y. Docket No. 16-cv-724.

After much legal wrangling, a jury heard testimony last month in the first civil trial arising out of the art forgery scandal that took down one of New York’s most prominent galleries.  The story began in 2011 when word spread that, over the course of more than a decade, the once-venerable Knoedler Gallery had sold about $60 million worth of artworks—purported to be by Pollock, Motherwell, Rothko, de Kooning, and other giants of the Abstract Expressionist movement—that later turned out to be forgeries.  Since then, more details have emerged.

Famed “appropriation artist” Jeff Koons was sued in federal court last month over his alleged copyright infringement of a photograph used in a 1986 liquor advertisement. Koons is no stranger to litigation, having been sued on several different occasions for his appropriation art.  The results of those suits have been mixed.  For example, one of his works, “String of Puppies,” in which he created a sculpture based on a photograph without permission from the photographer, became the subject of an important court decision when the Second Circuit rejected Koons’s argument that his copying of the photograph was protected by the fair-use doctrine.

This blog has written often about the Knoedler scandal, which exploded in 2011 when a once-venerable art gallery closed following revelations that, over the course of more than a decade, it had sold about $60 million worth of artworks—purported to be by Pollock, Motherwell, Rothko, de Kooning, and other giants of the Abstract Expressionist movement—that later turned out to be forgeries.  Our previous posts contain more detail, but in short, the works all came to Knoedler through a Long Island art dealer, Glafira Rosales, who claimed to represent an anonymous collector liquidating a collection of previously-unknown masterworks.  It turned out that the seller was a fiction, and the works were actually created by a little-known artist in Queens at the behest of Rosales (who in 2013 pled guilty to a litany of federal crimes).

Back in 2013, this blog covered the dismissal of a libel case against the New Yorker over its portrayal of an art authenticator.  The Second Circuit has now affirmed that decision, signaling the likely end of this dispute—even as the art world continues to struggle with the complex problem of authentication.

This blog has previously covered the case of Bilinski v. Keith Haring Foundation, Inc., a federal lawsuit filed last year in the Southern District of New York.  Collectors of artworks they believe to be by famed artist Keith Haring, sued the artist’s foundation claiming that it had improperly denied authentication, thereby damaging the value of their holdings.  This past spring, a federal judge dismissed the plaintiffs’ claims in a decision that explored some of the complex legal issues posed by artist foundations and authentication boards.  The Second Circuit has now affirmed that ruling.

Around this time last year, our blog wrote about the history of two works by Austrian Expressionist Egon Schiele.  Both were once owned by Fritz Grünbaum, a Jewish Austrian cabaret performer and art collector who was imprisoned by the Nazis in 1938 and died in Dachau in 1941; it’s unclear what happened to his art during and immediately after World War II, but a handful of the works have surfaced over the years since, sometimes leading to competing claims of ownership.

A recent case against tech giant Apple, Inc. provides important reminders about commercial use of photographs. The plaintiff in the case, Abbey Dykhouse, alleges that in September 2010, a photographer (Della Marie Huff, a freelance photographer, an Apple employee, and a friend of Dykhouse) had taken photographs of Dykhouse and her puppy, Stitch.  Huff later emailed Dykhouse, asking if Apple could use “a few of those photos of Stitch” in “demo libraries,” which are sample photo collections used to demonstrate Apple products at Apple retail stores.  Dykhouse subsequently executed an Apple release form which contemplated the use of photos for one year.  Three years later, though, Dykhouse learned that Apple was not only still including images of Stitch in demo libraries, but it was also using images that showed Dykhouse herself.

The Second Circuit has issued another important decision in the arena of copyright and fair use.  The ruling clarifies that, where the creator of a parody makes fair use of another work and adds sufficient originality of her own, she may claim copyright protection over the original components of the parody.

Federal courts continue to grapple with the complex question of when a defendant may successfully invoke the fair-use doctrine as a defense against copyright-infringement claims.  Fair use is a hot topic in copyright law these days, and it has prompted some high-profile litigation and some important recent decisions in the appellate courts.

Nearly two years ago, we wrote on this blog about the Southern District of New York’s decision ruling that the Google Books Library Project was protected by the fair use doctrine.  Earlier this month, the Second Circuit affirmed that decision, in what may well turn out to be the final word on the legality of Google’s ambitious project. In practical terms, this decision means that for now, after more than a decade of litigation, Google Books is legally in the clear.