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EXPLAINING THE PANDORA PAPERS
The release and investigation of the Pandora papers by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) exposed how the world’s wealthiest individuals hid their money from taxation using offshore entities. These papers also included...
CHRISTIE’S CONTINUES TO SELL ANCIENT AMERICAN ARTIFACTS
Once again, a prominent auction house is taking advantage of French law to sell ancient American artifacts. In addition to pre-Columbian artifacts, the sale also contained several lots of items, many of them sacred items, from the Taino...
THE ILLICIT TRADE IN HUMAN REMAINS
There has been a great deal of discussion online recently about the laws (or lack thereof) surrounding the trade in human remains. This trade has found a home on popular social media sites such as Facebook, TikTok and even Etsy, a site originally designed for the sale...
NEW ADDITION TO MCU—AVENGERS TERMINATED?
One of the features of the Copyright Act of 1976, which took effect on January 1, 1978, are provisions that allowed either a creator or a creator’s heirs to reclaim copyright ownership of rights that had been assigned by the creator. The purpose of these...
SACRED NATIVE AMERICAN SITE SOLD AT AUCTION
Earlier this month a 43 acre property in Missouri was sold at auction for $2.2 million. Normally a sale such as this would not garner international attention. But what made this particular plot of property unique, and the uniqueness that was used...
STILL BOLDLY GOING…TO TRIAL
The case of Dr. Seuss v. ComicMix isn’t over yet. In December 2020, the Ninth Circuit overturned the district court ruling stating that ComicMix’s use of Dr. Seuss’ materials was fair use. The district court had made this ruling at the...
SOVERIEGN IMMUNITY MAY NOT PROTECT A STATE AGAINST COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT
In 2019, film producer Rick Allen, who had been recording the underwater excavation of Blackbeard’s Queen Anne’s Revenge since the 1990s, sued the State of North Carolina for copyright infringement after the state posted Allen’s images and video clips on its...
EMBEDDING AN IMAGE MAY BE INFRINGEMENT
One of the rights provided under copyright law is the right to public display. This particular right is important for artists such as photographers and filmmakers as they make a living off of the ability to license their images and films for public...
COURT ORDERS FORFEITURE OF STOLEN TABLET PURCHASED BY HOBBY LOBBY
There are those that say there is no such thing as bad publicity. We beg to differ. Once again Hobby Lobby is in the news with another example of how the company once again purchased and displayed items of questionable origin in its museum. This time it is in...
JUDGE ORDERS PREJUDGMENT INTEREST AGAINST DEFENDANT WHO WOULDN’T STOP LITIGATING
In 2018, a New York court ruled that two Egon Schiele paintings had been looted by the Nazis and the heirs of the original owner were the rightful owners of the works. The two works in question, Woman in a Black Pinafore (1911) and Woman...
SETTLEMENT ANNOUNCED IN ROBERT INDIANA ESTATE
The parties involved in the lawsuit over the handling of the Robert Indiana estate have agreed to a settlement. You can read about it here.
HOBBY LOBBY SUES OVER STOLEN PAPYRI
Once again, Hobby Lobby and its Museum of the Bible is in the news. This time, Hobby Lobby is suing former Oxford University Dirk Obbink over Obbink’s alleged sale of stolen papyri to the Museum. According to the complaint, Hobby Lobby paid Obbink $7 million US...
APPARENTLY, DISNEY ISN’T SO GOOD ABOUT PAYING ROYALTIES EITHER
A major complaint of authors and musicians is that not only are they not paid royalties that are due on their work, but that it can be almost impossible to find out from their publishing companies exactly what royalties are owed. This is something I’ve run...
NEWARK MUSEUM OF ART UNDER FIRE FOR DEACCESSIONS
Cultural historians have signed an open letter calling into question the Newark Museum of Art’s decision to deaccession 17 paintings by prominent American artists. You can read about the letter...
STUDENT SPEECH AND ART
On Wednesday, April 28, the US Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Mahanoy Area School District v. B.L. The question here is how far can a school go in punishing a student for speech that occurred off-campus? The landmark case regarding a...
STATE DEMANDS LAWYERS FOR ROBERT INDIANA’S ESTATE RETURN EXCESSIVE FEES
The Attorney General’s Office for the State of Maine filed papers with the probate court overseeing the estate of Robert Indiana asking that the court order the attorneys involved in the administration of the estate to return a significant amount of their fees,...
WILDFIRE GUTS UNIVERSITY OF CAPE TOWN’S JAGGER LIBRARY
Wind driven wildfires in Cape Town, South Africa severely damaged the University of Cape Town’s historic Jagger Library on Sunday. The library, over 200 years old, is home to the University’s special collections, which includes rare books, photographs,...
SECOND CIRCUIT SAYS WARHOL’S “PRINCE SERIES” NOT FAIR USE
Last Friday, the Second Circuit ruled that Andy Warhol’s “Prince Series” was not fair use and sent the case back to the lower court to determine infringement damages. The case stems from a lawsuit by photographer Lynn Goldsmith. In 1981, Goldsmith took a photograph...