Copyright

Covey

It's not often that a copyright case comes before the courts, so this might be of interest.

It's exactly the case brought up here often of work given for free for a particular purpose and subsequently used for another.

A couple of points are interesting.

1. She did establish that she was a "professional artist" with the implication ,maybe, that a different view may have been taken were she not.

2. Damages were refused (or withdrawn as unlikely) with the only "satisfaction" for the Plaintiff being future usage.

3 Costs awarded at the lowest scale, meaning she may very well end up paying something.

Don't know if TJ still floats around here. Be interesting to hear his views?

Cruising_R32

Thanks, it is this type of information I was looking for.

Paulw

A very interesting case.

It seems that the facts were never really disputed - she held the copyright, her image was used without expressed permission. So, clearly it was a case of breach of copyright, to me anyway.

But, the fact that they settled all terms, means that the judge only had to rule on the payment of court costs.

So, the artist had a moral victory (which I guess it was mostly about anyway), and the financial outcome was just the payment for the solicitors, barristers and court.

Covey

The copyright wasn't in dispute it seems, but the fact she was looking for exemplary damages was the issue I would have thought. Having taken it to the circuit court she was obviously looking for a higher amount than the district court limits.

She was probably advised to withdraw this as it was unlikely to be granted or maybe the token €1 or whatever.

Suing for unauthorised usage without being able to prove monetary loss would appear to be something that is not worth it.

DaireQuinlan

Is there an image anywhere of the front cover of the book ? I presume the front cover is a picture of his yacht either in whole or in part, including the weather vane in question. I'm curious as to how significant it is in the picture.

Paulw

My reading of the story would imply that her art image was used as the book cover, which is what was used to base the mast image on.

So, it wasn't an image of the boat used, but her original work.

Covey

The pictures are in yesterdays Times.

DaireQuinlan

Paulw wrote: »

My reading of the story would imply that her art image was used as the book cover, which is what was used to base the mast image on.
So, it wasn't an image of the boat used, but her original work.

Oh right. Is that the case Covey ? Pictures aren't in the online archives of the IT, can't seem to find the cover of the book anywhere online.

Covey

Paulw wrote: »

My reading of the story would imply that her art image was used as the book cover, which is what was used to base the mast image on.

So, it wasn't an image of the boat used, but her original work.

The other way around. The image on the book was the derivitive image of that painted on the boat.

TJM

Interesting case but I think Paulw is right in saying not one where there were any difficult issues of law involved. The defendant seemed to suffer from the common misconception that as he owned the physical "canvas" he also owned rights in the image. But the plaintiff clearly retained copyright and the defendant didn't seem to argue that he had an implied licence to reuse the image for other sailing related activities. The question might well have been different had the image been used incidentally in a larger photo of the yacht itself.

(In any event, the case was never going to have much value as a precedent. Circuit Court decisions carry little weight anyway, and as the case was settled there was no judicial guidance given.)

On a related point, I recently read some very interesting discussion of the question of copyright in tattoos, where again the owner of the "canvas" might argue that he enjoys greater rights in what's put on that canvas. E.g. - prominent basketball star commissions a tattoo. Tattoo artist designs and tattoos original image on star. Star later features in advertising campaign and tattoo is centre stage in all photos. Can the tattoo artist prevent use of their image in this way? Farfetched hypothetical you say? I'm afraid not:

A Portland, Ore., man who put a tattoo on the right arm of Pistons forward Rasheed Wallace is suing to stop Wallace from displaying the work in ads for Nike basketball shoes.

Matthew Reed from TigerLilly Tattoo and DesignWorks claims he owns the copyright for the design of the tattoo. Reed's lawsuit wants the Nike ad featuring Wallace and the tattoo off the air and the Internet, as well as damages.

According to the suit filed last week in U.S. District Court, Wallace, who was then playing for the Portland Trail Blazers, approached Reed in 1998, saying he wanted an Egyptian-themed family design with a king and queen and three children and a stylized sun in the background.

Reed researched the idea and came up with a design. Reed said the $450 charge was a small amount, but he expected to benefit from the exposure.

Here's an interesting PDF (2.5mb but worth the wait) of slides setting out some of the issues, which have also been considered in some law review articles.