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The First Amendment has long provided protections for artists' creative expression and is a fundamental right for all United States citizens. However, with the rise of a predominantly digital world, those protections begin to blur with the introduction of non-fungible tokens (NFTs). Artistic creation often stems from an inspired source, and sometimes, that inspiration may come from registered intellectual property, specifically trademarks. Trademarks are everywhere we look, so it is not unusual for artists to be inspired by the logos, images, colors, figures, or symbols that are featured on billboards, magazine covers, or everyday items. When these trademarks are used in third-party artistic works, the situation often results in trademark owners gearing up to protect their marks and artists invoking their First Amendment rights to protect their creations. NFTs have become an extremely lucrative market, presenting a new route for artists to explore their creative ideas and an appealing business opportunity for luxury brands to enter into a unique space. Courts and practitioners must focus their attention on the rise of NFTs and trademark-related issues as litigation gradually increases. There has been a longstanding precedent formed by Rogers v. Grimaldi that gives courts some guidance on how to balance First Amendment protections and trademark rights, but with the introduction of NFTs, circuit courts are interpreting and applying the Rogers test in various ways resulting in inconsistent outcomes. This calls for another look at the Rogers test and a reconsideration of its design to balance First Amendment and trademark interests. This Article examines the nuances of First Amendment and trademark law to determine the effectiveness of the traditional Rogers test. This Article concludes that while courts have applied Rogers in unique ways, the emergence of NFTs requires a uniform approach that can only be accomplished by reconsidering Rogers's application to the digital world. This Article encourages courts to include a more fact-intensive analysis in Rogers cases so fact finders can distinguish between expressive artistic works and ordinary consumer products while discerning the works' true motives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores how the rise of artificial intelligence (AI) tools, such as celebrity voice synthesizers, is leading to concerns over the protection of artists' rights. Topics include the tension between copyright law and the right of publicity, discussions between Screen Actors Guild - American Federation of Television and Radio Artists.(SAG-AFTRA) and video game studios over AI likeness replication, and legislative efforts like the NO FAKES Act to address AI-generated imitations.

The article offers update on the Visual Artists Rights Act (VARA) and discusses the role of social media response in judicial analysis of recognized stature of artworks. It provides an overview of the recognized stature provision and examines its treatment in the case Castillo v. G&M Realty LP. It discusses the role of social media platforms in increasing accessibility to and engagement with street art and the foundations for incorporating online response into recognized stature analysis.

During election season, politicians and political campaigns often use pop culture or iconic works, such as viral memes or popular songs, to help convey their political messages--often without authorization from the copyright owners of these works. As politics and politicians become ever more divisive, these unauthorized political uses of copyrighted works can be particularly objectionable to copyright owners. In addition to offending their political or moral inclinations, artists and copyright owners frequently claim that these political uses infringe their copyrights. Politicians and campaigns argue that their right to use copyrighted works for political purposes is protected by the First Amendment and that such political uses are presumptively fair use. This Article examines unauthorized political uses of copyrighted works under copyright law's fair use doctrine to demonstrate that, in fact, both sides are correct. Through a series of case studies, this Article identifies a pattern in political fair use decisions: in disputes arising from the unauthorized political uses of copyrighted works, courts appear to implicitly modify their analyses and balancing of the fair use factors under section 107 of the Copyright Act in order to both accommodate the import of political speech and to respect copyright owners' dignity and rights to control use of their expressive works. Under the courts' political fair use analysis, one determination--the nature of the original copyrighted work--seems to exert an outsized influence on the determination of all four fair use factors, permitting certain unauthorized political uses of copyrighted works to appear presumptively fair. This contradicts the Supreme Court's guidance to courts not to subject copyright to independent First Amendment review nor to expand copyright's fair use doctrine in infringement cases involving political or public figures. It also disregards certain copyright owners' right to control use of their work but permits other copyright owners the right to curtail infringing behavior that causes no market harm. This Article highlights these concerns and explores the normative implications of political fair use on litigation certainty and predictability, incentives to create political expressive works, and the balance between respecting creators' dignity and rights to control use of their expressive works with guaranteeing free and open discussion of politicians and political candidates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Visual artists in countries that do not recognize the artist's resale right are at an economic disadvantage. while some countries that recognize the right experience practical dif.ficulties in identifying and tracking resales that are subject to royalty payments for artists. As blockchain technology becomes increasingly applied to the creative industries, the full extent of its potential in enforcing droit de suite by improving the traceability of physical artwork has yet to be realized. Blockchain can be an effective mechanism for enforcing the artist's resale right as an alternative to collective management organizations. Through an analysis of the ability of blockchain to ensure transparency, accountability, and good governance, this Article provides recommendations on the use of blockchain technology to enforce droit de suite for indigenous artists. The application of blockchain technology in the creative sector would contribute to economic, social, and cultural development in the context of digital trade. The conclusions of this Article on the implications of blockchain for visual artists should be of interest to policymakers engaged in both ongoing negotiations concerning droit de suite at the international level and copyright management at the national level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Digital workers have not had significant success in securing conventional forms of collective workplace representation, particularly statutory collective bargaining. This article examines an established sectoral bargaining statute, the Status of the Artist Act (SOA), as a possible model for collective bargaining legislation that is better suited to regulate digital work than the Wagner Act model (WAM) of labor legislation. Key features of the WAM labor legislation pose significant barriers for digital worker organizing. These include requirements to: demonstrate employee status, accurately estimate the number of employees in the proposed used, the requirement to demonstrate sufficient support. The WAM is oriented towards single-employer, single location, enterprise-level bargaining units. This is ill-suited to the organization of digital work. Recent certification cases involving Uber, Lyft, and Foodora illustrate the difficulties of these WAM features for digital worker organizing. The SOA, applicable to self-employed professional artists, shares much of the WAM framerk, but it departs from the WAM in crucial ways designed to overcome collective bargaining barriers for the arts sector. Key differences include: no requirement for workers to establish employee status; a broader approach to appropriateness relieves against fragmented, small, units characteristic of the WAM; a "most representative" standard instead of majority support means certification does not turn on the applicant's ability to accurately determine the number of workers in the proposed unit; limited challenges to representativeness; and, collective agreements provide a minimum floor, facilitating representation of heterogeneous workers in a unit. Organization of work and workers in the digital work and arts sectors share important similarities including the "gig" nature of the work and the geographic dispersion of workers. This article suggests that the structural similarities between digital and arts work, reflected in the SOA framework, offer guidance for a more effective statutory collective bargaining system for digital workers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent controversy concerning the unauthorized depiction of certain short dances in the popular video game Fortnite has sparked debate over whether artists who create or popularize short dances have any legal rights in those dances. This Recent Development argues that short dances should be afforded some opportunity for legal protection. It further analyzes which of the proposed modes of protection is more appropriate: copyright or the right of publicity. For policy reasons, this Recent Development concludes that, despite the inherent challenges, the right of publicity provides the best route to some limited form of protection for artists' rights in short dances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the protection of property and industrial rights in Chile in the year 2019. It reports on legislative proposals by the Instituto Nacional de Propiedad Industrial (INAPI) which aim to strengthen intellectual property rights and industrial rights. It highlights a fine imposed for tax benefit for non-payment of the intellectual property rights of the artists.

The article focuses on legal issues related to copyright and intellectual property and artistic activities in Argentina in the year 2019. It highlights the remuneration rights of actors and interpreters provided under the Law of Intellectual Property. It also discusses the conflict between the Sociedad Argentina de Gestion de Actores Interpretes Asociacion Civil (SAGAI) and the Artistas Interpretes Sociedad de Gestion (AISGE) on the protection of the legitimate rights of the members.

The article discusses the concept and value of the art law. It provides brief discussion of the art law, which offers a multi-disciplinary practice that requires extensive knowledge of diverse substantive areas such as contracts, real property, and trusts. It also offers background of the history and origin of art law and traces the legislative and regulatory developments of the evolving field.

The article discusses U.S. copyright law-related moral rights in relation to the legal aspects of art ownership and the legal rights of artists as of 2016. According to the article, moral rights are derived from the le driot moral 18th century French legal concept which deals with non-economic, spiritual, and personal interests in creative works. The 1979 California Art Preservation Act and the 1976 U.S. Copyright Act are examined, along with America's 1990 Visual Artists Rights Act.

The creation of voluntary representation finds its cause in the underlying purpose of the management relationship. Its realization in the field of music performance is configured through the management contract established between the artist and the representative; a contractual figure where the particularities of the legal framework of voluntary representation and the protection of artists, performers, and players converge. The management contract of music player representatives is a contract by which the representative agrees to render cooperation services on behalf of the artist, vital for the circulation of the performance or play, as a cultural product. These are activities the artist cannot and does not want to carry out, as he is immersed in the creative process. This is an atypical, consensual, bilateral -given its onerous character- contract, although there are no obstacles for the contract to be free, with a long term. It is also based on principles of exclusivity, mutual trust, and reciprocal loyalty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the need of protection of collections of street art under the U.S. Visual Artists Rights Act of 1990 (VARA). It mentions use of 5Pointz, a complex of unused industrial buildings located in Long Island City, Queens in New York by street artists to exhibit works of street art. It reports the need of expansion in the VARA's current scope, as of July 2015.

The article discusses the concept of resale royalties for the visual artists under the validity of the California Resale Royalty Act in the U.S. It states that the law offers copyright protection to the members of the California Lawyers for the Arts (CLA). It also cites the legislative history for the bank accounts of foreign royalties administrators and artists.

The article analyzes the legal framework of the New Life Art (NLA) related to the purpose of trademark law. Topics discussed include laws for regulating the protection and enforcement of trademarks, role of the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution in providing freedom of expression to artists, and judicial opinion on the case University of Alabama Board of Trustees v. New Life Art and Daniel Moore (NLA).

The right of publicity is an established legal doctrine that grants individuals the exclusive right to control the commercial use of their image. Though it has many important and laudable uses, one unfortunate consequence of the right of publicity is that it restricts artists' abilities to portray real persons in their works. In so doing, the right of publicity directly conflicts with the First Amendment protections of an individual's freedom of expression. While the U.S. Supreme Court addressed this tension in Zacchini v. Scripps-Howard Broadcasting Co., the Court did not create a clear standard for balancing the interests of each right. Without guidance from the Supreme Court, lower courts have developed four tests for balancing the right of publicity against the First Amendment: the relatedness test, the predominant purpose test, the transformative use test, and the ad-hoc balancing test. Although most courts use only a single test to analyze the conflict between the right of publicity and the First Amendment, the Sixth Circuit, in ETW Corp. v Jireh Publishing Inc., relied on both the transformative use test and the ad-hoc balancing test to form its analysis. This Note proposes a test based on the Sixth Circuit approach, which creates a predictable standard for balancing the First Amendment against the right of publicity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses several developments involving copyright law-related cases in the U.S. as of January 2014, focusing on legal proceedings which deal with topics such as subject matter jurisdiction, the nation's fair use copyright law doctrine, and the U.S. Visual Artists Rights Act. In a 2013 case involving the Murray Engineering PC firm, architectural plans, damages, and a motion to dismiss are examined. Originality and copyrightability are assessed in relation to religious texts.

The article discusses the reported relationship between American copyright law and class stratification, focusing on the legal and cultural concepts of originality and lone artistic creation, as well as information about the U.S. Visual Artists Rights Act of 1990 and legal remedies in America. The concept of cultural capital is addressed in relation to America's fair use legal doctrine and transformativeness. Moral rights and the legal aspects of derivative works and copying are examined.

The article focuses on the European court case Dali v. ADAGP, which dealt with the resale directive under European Union (EU) law. Topics include the right of artists to receive royalties in instances of resale, the development of resale rights in Europe, and droit de suite copyright laws in Europe.

The Copyright System as established by the Bern Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works, did not provide the necessary protection to those "parties" involved in bringing the work to the public, although it represented a major role in promoting the work. So it was necessary for the legal protection to be regulated in order to allow them to benefit from the entire moral and economic attributes resulted from their work. To remedy the absence of protection due to copyright applicable traditional rules, a new protection system was created: that of related rights. On international level, this led to the adoption in 1961 of the Rome Convention for the Protection of Performers, Producers of Phonograms and Broadcasting Organizations, considered in the literature as arising of the Bern Convention, alongside the TRIPS Agreement and the WIPO Treaties in this filed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A bibliography of copyright law resources is presented which includes the articles "Understanding Intellectual Property: A Guide for Artists" by James Creekmore and Andrew P. Connors, "Efficient Copyright Infringement" by David Fagundes, and "Concepts of Law" by Mathew D. McCubbins and Mark Turner.

The article offers a report from a February 3, 2012 conference in Berlin, Germany on the history of military mapping and espionage in Europe called "Treading the Border. Topographical Drawing, Military Sketching and Visual Espionage in Europe from the 16th to the 20th Century." Topics of presentations delivered included the history of boundaries, the persecution of artists as spies in 15th-century Italy, and 18th- and 19th-century French travel writings.

The Visual Artists Rights Act of 1990 (VARA) controversially recognized artists' "moral rights" by protecting their work from alteration or destruction and by preventing the use of an artist's name on a work he did not create. While moral rights are frequently criticized as antithetical to the traditional economic framework of American intellectual property law, Henry Hansmann and Marina Santilli have suggested that moral rights can be justified economically because they vindicate artists' pecuniary interests. This Note, in contrast, argues that VARA also benefits the purchasing and viewing public, especially in an era of factory-made or assistant- produced art works. Specifically, moral rights, like trademark law, can reduce starch costs, ensure truthful source identification, and increase efficiency in the an market. This comparison between trademark law and moral rights shows that the sort of rights regime established by VARA is neither unique nor unprecedented in American law, and that it is highly economic in character. Thus, this Note hopes to reframe the dialogue surrounding moral rights, shifting it away from the classic "personhood" or anti-commodification" arguments that have undergirded the rhetoric up to this day. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on problems related to the separation of record producer's copyright. Since a producer's contribution can be of relative significance as a sole author, as important to share co-authorship with an artist, and may not have sufficient work to enjoy interests therefore it is requisite to create a two-part inquiry. The inquiry would first segregate a producer's contributions and then evaluates whether the contributions are significant to bring under joint authorship principles.

The artist's resale royalty right, commonly called the droit de suite, has proven politically popular in a diverse range of countries. Since France first codified the right into law in 1920, at least fifty countries have followed suit. To date, the United States, with the exception of California, has been notably absent from this picture. But a federal resale royalty law is now on the horizon for American artists. In December 2011, delegates in both the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate introduced the Equity for Visual Artists Act of 2011 (EVAA), a bill which would amend the existing copyright law to include a resale royalty provision. This Article evaluates whether Congress should adopt the EVAA, or some other variation of the resale royalty right, and provides guidance to lawmakers in considering such legislation. Specifically, this Article points out that an informational deficit, which it terms the information problem, looms over the resale royalty right. Scholars and lawmakers must have access to information about sales of artwork in order to evaluate the effect and efficacy of the right in practice. Likewise, the structure of the right requires that various parties have access to information about sales in order to carry out the requirements of resale royalty laws. However, secrecy norms pervade the art market, especially in the United States, making such information difficult, if not impossible, to come by. This Article considers several possibilities for how federal lawmakers might overcome, or at least minimize, this information problem, and concludes that the most promising scheme would be one that requires parties to disclose relevant information through a registration system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses a 2001 European Directive (ED) which deals with the copyright law droit de suite (DDS) doctrine on the rights of artists to resell their protected works, including information on a 2012 extension of the DDS right to the estates of deceased artists. It states that the ED also addresses the issue of a sliding scale for royalty payments. The European Commission, European Union law, and a legal case involving musician Phil Collins are also mentioned.

An essay is presented on the dispute between Swiss installation artist Christoph Büchel and the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (Mass MoCA) which dealt with moral rights. It explains MoCA's founding principles as new and postmoderm form of art museum. It discusses the lawsuit between the museum and Büchel. Moreover, it examines the Tilted Arc controversy which concerned a work of public art commissioned by the government.

The article explores the conflict between the use of loan-out corporations in the U.S. entertainment industry and the restriction on artists' termination rights under the 1976 Copyright Act. It offers a review of the background, policy rationale and legal structure of the termination rights under the act. The legal arguments that might be used by lawyers and litigants to invoke termination rights for artists relying on loan-out corporations are also discussed.

In 2010, the Court of Appeals for the First Circuit confronted the novel question of when moral rights protections vest under the Visual Artists Rights Act. In Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art Foundation, Inc. v. Büchel, the First Circuit determined that the protections of the Visual Artists Rights Act begin when a work is "created" under the Copyright Act. This Note argues that this decision harms moral rights conceptually and is likely to result in unpredictable and inconsistent decisions. This Note proposes instead that these statutory protections should vest when an artist determines that his work is complete and presents it to the public. This standard is more consistent with the history of moral rights. Additionally, public access is necessary to justify a treatment of art different from that of other types of property, and it is a more essential component of moral rights than an artist's feelings of connection to his work. Finally, the legislative intent behind the Visual Artists Rights Act and the reasoning in previous judicial decisions are more accurately reflected by a public disclosure standard. Utilizing "creation" as a vesting point for moral rights is not supported by the history of the Visual Artists Rights Act and will result in uncertainty and inconsistency in future decisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses a court case wherein Chapman Kelley, visual artist, sued Chicago Park District for violating his moral rights under the Visual Artists Rights Act of 1990 (VARA). The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit held that the garden cannot receive copyright protection due to issues of fixation and authorship required by the Copyright Act. The court states that the garden is not copyrightable since it owes more to natural forces than to the artist.

The article focuses on 'moral rights' laws within intellectual property and copyright laws in the U.S. Information is provided on how visual artists can force owners of their work to conform to their wishes of nonalteration under the doctrine of the artist's rights of personality. The author examines why U.S. laws provide provisions for visual artists and why such moral rights are significant in the U.S. legal system.

The article provides an overview of Visual Artists Rights Act of 1990 (VARA) which is in contrast to the scope of visual artistic media. It addresses the statute's case law which divides the VARA's application and the scenarios that arts professionals are encountering in preserving artworks. It suggests to amend the VARA to effectuate its purpose when it is applied to common conservation practices and puts a set of guidelines to reduce the likelihood that the conservation of artwork jeopardizes the rights of artists.

The article examines the protection available to visual artists in the form of art statutes. However, the artist-gallery relationship only continues to be fruitful for the artist as long as the gallery is able to sell the artist's works, and as long as the gallery remits payment to the artist as required. More than 30 U.S. states and the District of Columbia have implemented consignment statutes governing the artist-dealer relationship.

An essay is presented on the effects of Chinese copyright laws on the moral rights of artists. It presents an overview of the relationship between pecuniary interests of authors and their moral rights. It offers information on the significance of moral rights in the creation of artists according to Chinese context.

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The article discusses the German model for choice-of-law on droit de suite in Great Britain. The German model, which is developed in the case law by the German Federal Court of Justice, may be a suitable starting point to develop a choice-of-law rule for the European resale right and its implementation legislations by the Member States under Article 8 Rome II Regulation. However, the model is only suitable to handle resales with connections between one Member State and a third State. The choice of law rule has to be refined to the effect that only one implementation legislation of a Member State governs the artist's resale right within the internal market.

The article examines the rules governing agreements between people in the entertainment industry and their agents, lawyers, managers and promoters. The scope of authority that an agent or a manager will have will depend on the kind of representation undertaken and the profession the client is pursuing. Agents are sometimes required to provide simple advice and guidance to the artist or promote him and obtain engagements for him. A management agreement entails a broader responsibility.

The article outlines the legal context for Vietnamese artists that is not discussed in other literature, including the scarcity of data on the art market, the reasons for failure to enforce intellectual property (IP) rights and legal contracts, and the rapid growth of private-sector art dealing that makes an examination of the legal context so essential. The author's field research in Vietnam since 2003 is linked to analyses of Vietnam's art market and to civil codes and other international agreements that determine professional artists’ IP rights. This illustrates the reasons why IP rights have not been enforced or arbitrated in Vietnam. The author includes a discussion of the importance of enforcing IP law for the maintenance of artists’ incomes and careers, the development of a national art market, and for innovation and cultural sustainability in Vietnam. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The South Korean government preserves traditional arts at the national, city and provincial levels, through Munhwajae Pohobŏp (Cultural Property Preservation Law), with the aim of preserving the wŏnhyŏng (original form). Specifically, it designates the relevant properties and, for the Intangible Cultural Properties the relevant artists, as "Poyuja (Holder)." However, the government's intention behind the cultural policy is not often realized in the actual performance context. To address tins, I examine how local artists perceive the wŏnhyŏng (original form) in the case of a local art from South Kyŏngsang Province: T'ongyŏng Ogwangdae (Mask Drama of T'ongyŏng). The existing literature on cultural policy in South Korea tends to deal only with the tense relationship between the national government and local artists, focusing more on government acts than on the response of local artists. This research concentrates on illuminating how local artists perceive the original form, in comparison with the investigator(s) for designation. For the Intangible Cultural Properties, the government sets forth as a premise that it can discover "nativeness" in the sector of "folklore" from Korea. In the case of the music of the Mask Drama of T'ongyŏng, the investigators define the original form as the oldest surviving form that, in their perception, has local features. However, the local artists regard it as the original, functionally-intended form, focusing more on "functional intention" that on "physical form." From this perspective, they show differences from the oldest surviving version in terms of tempo and rhythms. If then essentialism is involved in stronger essentialism, there will be a danger that the governments and the local artists will become estranged and the relationship between them become difficult. To prevent this danger, and to enable them to coexist, I argue that ethnomusicologists might play a positive role as mediators. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article opposes the foundations of moral rights scholarship, law and theory and that laws derived from the concept of moral rights endanger art although it claims to protect it. It explains that moral rights refers to the rights of artists to their creation even after their work has already been purchased by a buyer. Moral rights is European in origin and it became part of U.S. law since the enactment of the Visual Artists Rights Act of 1990. The notion of integrity in moral rights allows an artist to prevent the modification and destruction of his art work and this notion fails to recognize the artistic importance of modifying or destroying works of art.

The article discusses aspects on the limitations of the Visual Artists Rights Acts of 1990 (VARA) by studying the unique arts of Christo Javacheff and his wife Jeanne-Claude in the U.S. The author is critical of the refusal of First Circuit to allow site-specific art to be protected by the act preventing artists from practicing their rights of integrity and attribution. A proposal to amend VARA for the extension of protection to site-specific artworks is advised. A background of the artworks of Christo is also discussed.

The article discusses copyrights for artists and media's freedom of expression. The challenges to copyright laws were reportedly not challenged until the passage of the Computer Software Copyright Act (CSCA) of 1980 in the U.S. which looked at copyright as technical innovation and digitalization rendering copies. Court cases brought against the media industry which claim freedom of expression in freely accessing copyrighted materials are presented to illustrate the conflict. Europe was said to have copied the CSCA.

The article presents an analytical and theoretical discussion of how an artist's artwork should be treated once it enters the global marketplace. The origins of artists' rights are explored. The approaches to the legal formulation of artist's rights are discussed. It determines the possibility of reconciling the retained rights of the artists and the rights of owners of artworks.