In a recent post, we discussed the European Parliament’s adoption earlier this month of a new Directive that will have far-reaching effects on Europe’s art market.  We predicted that the United States might soon follow the EU’s lead by implementing similar legislation.  Now, the U.S. Congress is officially headed down the same path.

The oddly audacious copying of artwork at Rabbit Town illustrates a simple fact about artists who want to defend their intellectual property rights; that mission gets more complicated when an issue crosses international borders, because there is no universal international copyright law that protects an artwork all over the world.

On April 19, the European Parliament—the legislative body of the European Union—adopted the 5th Anti-Money Laundering Directive.  The new legislation will significantly affect Europe’s art market, and prominent members of the art world have already expressed their concerns about the practical consequences of the Directive.

The Museum of Modern Art—universally known as MoMA—has filed a lawsuit against MoMaCha, a Lower East Side art gallery and café with a curiously similar name to the museum’s famous moniker.

​Several stories in the news recently have turned a spotlight on the complex world of collecting art and historical artifacts across international borders—and serve as a reminder of the importance of diligence and legal advice in such transactions.

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.

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.

Last week, a New York appellate court upheld the dismissal of invasion-of-privacy tort claims against photographer Arne Svenson for his 2012 photography series, “The Neighbors.”  The decision marks an important development concerning the intersection of art and privacy laws.

As announced last fall, in a shift to become almost exclusively a grant-making organization, the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts is dispersing its entire collection of Warhols, donating some and selling others through Christie’s auction house.

Knoedler, founded by Michael Knoedler in 1846, was for many years one of the oldest and most prominent American art galleries.  But earlier this year, amid reports of a federal forgery investigation focusing on Knoedler’s sales of artworks that—despite attribution to Modernist masters—have no documented provenance, Knoedler’s reputation has gone the way of its business (Knoedler shuttered its doors unexpectedly in December 2011).  The lawsuits followed.

A recent New York Times article shines a spotlight on the subject of whether and how to seek more transparency in the art market. The article explores the sometimes-competing interests of auction houses, galleries, museums, and collectors when it comes to ensuring that art transactions are governed by clear and fair disclosures and rules. It also provides an overview of some of the possible reforms that have been proposed in recent years.

For years, Chabad-Lubavitch, a Hasidic Jewish organization based in New York, has sought the return of two sets of religious books and manuscripts related to the group’s heritage, collectively known as known as the Schneerson Collection.  One group of records, comprising about 12,000 religious texts, was seized around the time of the Russian Revolution.  The other set, made up of about 25,000 pages of handwritten manuscripts by the group’s past religious leaders, was stolen by Nazi German forces during World War II, and then seized by the Red Army and transported to the Soviet Union, where they currently are housed primarily in the Russian State Military Archive and the Russian State Library.

As Nazi forces bombed and invaded Europe during World War II, they also stole an estimated five million works of art and cultural objects from museums, universities, and private collectors alike.  As a recent New York Times article points out, great efforts have been made—and continue to be made—to recover those stolen works, some of which have popped up where some would least expect to find them.

Multi-million-dollar transactions involving real estate, loans, or investments are virtually always governed by thorough and comprehensive contracts negotiated and drafted by lawyers.  Why, then, are such agreements rarely used in connection with the purchase and sale of high-end art?  A recent decision in a federal lawsuit arising from the $17 million sale of a Mark Rothko painting highlights that the art market’s seemingly ubiquitous practice of using one-page invoices, rather than adequate written contracts, invites burdensome—and potentially avoidable—litigation.

Earlier this year, the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts disbanded its authentication committee in part to reflect its intent to shift focus toward maximizing “grant making and other charitable activities.”  Earlier this week, the Portland Institute of Contemporary Art announced that with the support of the Warhol Foundation, it will launch the Precipice Fund, a new grant-giving initiative for Portland-based unincorporated visual art collectives, alternative spaces, and collaborative projects.  The fund aims to provide fifteen to twenty small grants, ranging from five hundred to five thousand dollars, for a total of seventy-five thousand dollars annually.

A recent decision by a federal judge in the Southern District of New York stands as a stark warning to galleries and collectors about the importance of completing comprehensive due diligence before purchasing any work of art.

In a recent decision in Harney v. Sony Pictures Television, Inc., No. 11-1760, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit analyzed the complex question of whether two photographs are “substantially similar” for purposes of a copyright-infringement claim. The court’s discussion will be of interest to photographers, filmmakers, and artists who incorporate photographs into their works, as it sheds light on what originality a photo display needs in order to be protected by copyright laws.

The Art Loss Register—the world’s largest database of stolen art—lists almost 400,000 works as stolen.  A decision from the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in United States v. Davis, 648 F.3d 84 (2d Cir. 2011) highlights the problems faced even by “innocent owners” of stolen art, and serves as a reminder of the importance of confirming a work’s provenance before purchasing it, particularly when the work originated abroad.