Richard Prince is one of the most reviled names in the worlds of photography and copyright.  This is because his career and notoriety are built largely on high-profile “appropriation” art works, which have earned him considerably more income than most artists ever see, including, of course, most of the photographers whose images he has used without permission.   In September ...

My colleague Stephen Carlisle at Nova Southeastern University already made short work of the aberration of copyright law and fair use analysis that occurred recently in the District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. But I wanted to expand on a few elements that caught my attention. In the case Brammer v. Violent Hues Productions, LLC, the court’s deference ...

When I saw that this year’s World IP Day/Week celebrates the contributions of women, the first thought that came to mind was a memory of a chance meeting in the Spring of 1986 with a legendary photographer named Helen Levitt. My friend Josh and I were in New York City down from college and were supposed to stop by a ...

If for no reason other than the fact that I’m out of monkey jokes, I’m pleased to announce that the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has finally put an end to PETA’s ridiculous litigation in which the organization alleged that the Sulawesi crested macaque in the photograph known as the “monkey selfie” is rightfully the owner of the copyright in ...

You might think that among the most straightforward relationships between a user and a creator of a copyrighted work would be that of a news organization and a photographer—namely that the news organization should license the photographs it uses for any of its stories.  It is also common-sensical that whenever a news organization displays a photograph in a manner that ...

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