The United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit reversed a lower court opinion today in the case of Cariou v. Prince and handed another victory to the perhaps surprisingly robust world of contemporary collage artistry and appropriation art generally. The story of the case is relatively straight forward. In 2000, Patrick Cariou published (...) [Read More]
Category Archives: Fair Use
Performance Artist FORCE Launches Spoof with Long Legs
December 18, 2012
A group of performance artists from Baltimore known as “FORCE: Upsetting Rape Culture” took advantage of a much anticipated media event to bring attention to the importance of consensual sex. The VS All Access Victoria’s Secret fashion show is an such an event, gluing billions of eyeballs to its prime time telecast. For FORCE, the (...) [Read More]
Turning Lemons into Lemonade: How one Trademark Owner Protected its IP and Avoided being Branded a Troll
July 31, 2012
That old saying seldom rings more true than it does with the recent cease and desist letter sent out by Jack Daniel’s. It seems that Patrick Wensink, an author, used a cover for his book that was quite similar to the trademarked label of Jack Daniel’s. Rather than send him a scalding and legalistic attack letter, (...) [Read More]
Lady Gaga left “Speechless” after domain name dispute ruling.
November 28, 2011
Despite all of “The Fame,” even Lady Gaga doesn’t win them all. Recently, Gaga was on the losing end of a domain name dispute regarding the domain “ladygaga.org.” Gaga had brought a domain name complaint under the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers’ (“ICANN”) Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (“UDRP”) against a fan (...) [Read More]
Facebook of Sex — Trademark Infringement or Parody?
October 23, 2011
Facebook has sued Various, Inc., the owner of Penthouse, adultfriendfinder.com and other adult-themed websites, in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California, for trademark infringement based upon Various’ creation of website called Facebook of Sex with the URL: facebookofsex.com. Various has defended the name and the website saying, among other things, (...) [Read More]
