Trademarks in the metaverse — artistic expression or commercial product?; Reuters, January 5, 2023

Dorothy R. Auth

, Howard Wizenfeld

 and A.J. Harris

, Reuters; Trademarks in the metaverse — artistic expression or commercial product?

"While the Rogers decision was initially limited to movie titles, courts have variously expanded its application to books, songs, video games, and even commercial items such as dog toys, with particular expansion occurring in the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The extent of its scope is now at issue at the U.S. Supreme Court. While virtual goods present issues different from physical goods, how courts determine the metes and bounds of the Rogers test will be determinative of how NFTs are analyzed."

Andy Warhol Foundation Asks Supreme Court to Review Prince Pop Art Dispute; The Hollywood Reporter, December 9, 2021

Ashley Cullins, The Hollywood Reporter; Andy Warhol Foundation Asks Supreme Court to Review Prince Pop Art Dispute

"The Warhol Foundation argues that allowing the split to stand would create a “sea-change” in copyright law and lead to “inconsistent results and forum shopping” if the 2nd and 9th Circuits are using different frameworks to analyze fair use.

It argues the decision also chills artistic expression because creating new works as cultural commentary — like Warhol and the larger pop art movement did — could now amount to copyright infringement if the image is deemed too “recognizeable” to be transformative."

WHAT IF ‘STAR TREK’ WERE FREE? HOW THE STORIED SCI-FI FRANCHISE COULD INSPIRE COPYRIGHT REFORM; Newsweek, March 5, 2018

Andrew Whalen, Newsweek; 

WHAT IF ‘STAR TREK’ WERE FREE? HOW THE STORIED SCI-FI FRANCHISE COULD INSPIRE COPYRIGHT REFORM

"CBS and Paramount are unlikely to see things the same way. While Star Trek: Discovery press releases trumpet the “ideology and hope for the future that inspired a generation of dreamers and doers,” plans for streaming market domination depend upon exclusivity. The metaphor equating artistic expression and property has become so ingrained that companies regularly reduce their consumers to provisional licensees, subject to whatever controls the copyright holder decides upon, even long after the point of purchase.

“Star Trek stands on the shoulders of giants. It exists because they plundered some of the most interesting stories and memes of science fiction, just as all science fiction writers do, to tell their own story. And to argue that when they did it that was the legitimate progress of art and whenever anyone else does it, it's theft, is pretty self-serving and kind of obviously bullshit,” Doctorow said. “It's a ridiculous thing for a law to ban something that ancient and fundamental to how we experience art.”

Countering the monopoly exercised by copyright holders will require a broader social realignment, under which people come to understand art as a shared cultural endowment, rather than product—a mindset beyond capital."

Current copyright regime makes entertainment industry boring; The Daily Texan, June 18, 2017

Usmaan Hasan, The Daily Texan; Current copyright regime makes entertainment industry boring

"The current system of copyright and intellectual property protections quells artistic expression gives consumers the short end of the stick.

Mickey Mouse, as a property of Disney, enjoys bipartisan support in Congress. He was created in 1928, and under the existing copyright regime of the time, Disney’s right to Mickey should have ended in 1956 at the soonest, 1984 at the latest. Yet with some Disney magic, without fail, Congress expands copyright protections every time the Mickey is about to lapse into the public domain.

The hypocrisy coming from Disney is staggering. It has gained its immense wealth by monetizing properties in the public domain – like Cinderella, a centuries old fairy tale owned by no one – lobbying for copyright protections for those properties, and then reworking properties while constantly expanding the lifetime of their protections. It is a company that has managed to exercise artistic reinterpretation of cultural touchstones while making it nearly impossible for others to do the same. In fact, Disney has made its wealth by making movies on at least 50 works in the public domain."

'Charging Bull' sculptor calls for New York to remove 'Fearless Girl' statue; Guardian, April 12, 2017

Jamiles Lartey, Guardian; 

'Charging Bull' sculptor calls for New York to remove 'Fearless Girl' statue

"Siegel and Di Modica have asked the city of New York to remove the statue, which became something of a phenomenon when it was first installed earlier this year, and tied by many to the global Women’s March movement. They say the city should place the “Fearless Girl” somewhere else where it no longer relies on the “Charging Bull”. “The work is incomplete without Mr Di Modica’s Charging Bull, and as such it constitutes a derivative work,” Seigel said, noting that the statue of the girl, hands on her hips, only becomes “fearless” because of the much larger, aggressive bull.

Siegel pointed to a 1990 copyright statute that grants visual artists the right “to prevent any intentional distortion, mutilation or other modification of that work which would be prejudicial to [the artist’s] reputation”.

In addition to the removal of the statue, Di Modica was seeking unspecified damages from the city of New York. Siegel said, however, that his client had not filed a lawsuit yet and is hoping the city – specifically its mayor, Bill de Blasio – will come to the table with the artist in good faith. De Blasio recently extended “Fearless Girl’s” permit through March 2018 and has called it a symbol of “standing up to fear, standing up to power” and doing what’s right. Seigel said the “inescapable implication” was that Di Modica’s bull became “a force against doing what’s right”."

Wikimedia’s art database violates copyright law, rules Sweden’s highest court; Ars Technica.com, 4/5/16

Glyn Moody, Ars Technica; Wikimedia’s art database violates copyright law, rules Sweden’s highest court:

"The Wikimedia Foundation said the judgment eroded "the freedom of panorama that is a fundamental part of freedom of expression, freedom of information, and artistic expression."

As Ars has reported, EU copyright is currently being updated, and one of the proposals of the European Parliament is for freedom of panorama to be enshrined in EU law. Referring to the Swedish court's ruling against Wikimedia Sverige, the author of the European Parliament's report on the proposed copyright reform, Pirate Party MEP Julia Reda, tweeted on Monday: "This is why we need EU-wide #FreedomofPanorama!""

Stamps, Sculpture and Free Expression; Stanford Center for Internet and Society, 7/15/09

Anthony Falzone via Stanford Center for Internet and Society; Stamps, Sculpture and Free Expression:

"We filed an amicus brief today in Gaylord v. U.S., a potentially important but little-noticed fair use case on appeal in the Federal Circuit. We filed it on behalf of the Andy Warhol Foundation, and several other amici, including the Warhol Museum, contemporary artists Barbara Kruger, Thomas Lawson, Jonathan Monk, and Allen Ruppersberg, and a variety of law professors who care about the extent to which copyright promotes and protects free expression.

One of the important questions the case presents is whether this stamp makes fair use of the statue that appears in it. The image you see is a photograph of a sculpture taken at dawn in a snowstorm. The sculpture itself is called The Column, and is part of the Korean War Veterans' Memorial in Washington DC. It features nineteen larger-than-life soldiers arranged in two columns, representing a platoon of soldiers on patrol in the Korean War. The Postal Service got permission to use the photograph that appears on the stamp, but not the column depicted in it, so the sculptor sued the Postal Service for infringing his copyrights in the sculpture.

One of the important questions this case presents is whether and to what extent an artists has the right to use existing imagery to create new artistic expression. We think fair use does and should protect this right, which is crucial to huge amounts of expression, including vast amounts of modern art. We submitted an amicus brief because we thought the Federal Circuit should hear the views of those who create, promote and defend that art."

http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/node/6223