Remember that AI artwork that won first prize at a Colorado State Fair art competition, sparking a debate around AI usage that went viral? According to the U.S. Copyright Office, the work cannot be copyrighted, at least not without disclaiming those portions made through the use of AI.

Recently, a federal judge in D.C. agreed with the Copyright Office that artwork generated wholly by artificial intelligence is not eligible for copyright protection for lack of human authorship. The decision leaves unaddressed the more nuanced question of what level of human involvement is sufficient for a work that is generated in part through artificial intelligence to be copyrightable.

The Visual Artists Rights Act poses no bar to Vermont Law School’s concealment of controversial murals, per a recent Second Circuit Court of Appeals ruling.

Here’s a roundup of legal issues at the intersection of art, intellectual property, and technology.

What happens when a copyright application contains a mistake? Will that mistake invalidate a copyright registration? Fortunately, the Copyright Act contains a safe-harbor provision protecting registrations from invalidation based on innocent errors. In this blog post, we discuss the safe-harbor provision and a recent case interpreting that statute.

Today, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and the U.S. Copyright Office published a Notice of Inquiry in the Federal Register announcing that they are conducting a joint study regarding issues of intellectual property law and policy associated with non-fungible tokens (NFTs).

A federal court in Los Angeles recently dismissed with prejudice a lawsuit filed by Spencer Elden, who was the baby featured in Nirvana’s iconic Nevermind album artwork, accusing the band and others of creating and exploiting child pornography. Per the judge, Elden’s lawsuit is barred by the statute of limitations. We discuss the case below.

Last week, New York passed a new law that requires museums with identifiable works of art that were stolen during Nazi-era Europe to prominently display a placard acknowledging such information along with the display of such works.

Earlier this week, a federal judge in Florida denied Maurizio Cattelan’s motion to dismiss a lawsuit filed by another artist claiming that Catellan’s Comedian infringed his copyright in a work he created nearly twenty years earlier.

In a first, a New York judge recently allowed plaintiff’s counsel to serve papers on “John Doe” defendants via a non-fungible “service” token. This new strategy allows those aggrieved by anonymous actors to effect service of process without having to find out the anonymous party’s name, physical address, email, or other identifying information.

In a surprise to the art market, New York City recently repealed a set of rules that governed auction house practices. The repeal was part of a broader regulatory effort by the City to stimulate business activity in various industry sectors and does not seem to have been lobbied for by auction houses. The repealed rules initially were passed into law as consumer protection measures designed to require more transparency in auction sales.

The newly-established Copyright Claims Board (the “CCB”) will begin accepting claims on June 16, 2022, according to the Copyright Office. The CCB arose out of the Copyright Alternative in Small-Claims Enforcement Act of 2020 (or the “CASE Act”), which Congress passed in 2020. It is the first-ever copyright small claims forum, intended to provide an accessible and efficient alternative for resolving copyright disputes involving claims up to $30,000.

In one of the first trademark infringement cases involving an NFT project, a federal court in Manhattan recently denied artist Mason Rothschild’s motion to dismiss the lawsuit Hermès filed in connection with the artist’s MetaBirkin NFT project. The decision is important because it shows how courts may analyze trademark infringement claims in connection with NFTs going forward.

In this blog post, we update our prior post about a case in which a federal court in Vermont held that a visual artist could not prohibit a law school from concealing murals he painted on the campus.

When is a copyright infringement case ripe for dismissal at the outset because the secondary work clearly made fair use of the first-in-time work? And, if a court grants the defendant’s motion to dismiss, should the judge then award the defendant its attorneys’ fees in defending the case? These issues were explored in a recent Second Circuit Court of Appeals decision – Yang. v. Mic Network Inc. Here’s what you need to know.

The Supreme Court will hear the closely-watched dispute over whether the Warhol Foundation made fair use of photographer Lynn Goldsmith’s photograph of Prince.

Last year, we wrote about a few early lawsuits involving NFT projects including a Pulp Fiction drop and a planned Jay-Z album drop here and here. More recently, a number of other NFT-related lawsuits have been filed, including a case over the rights to an early NFT, cases against an artist and an artist’s estate over rights to mint, and suits by brands alleging third-party drops infringe and dilute their trademarks. Here’s a roundup of the cases.

Recently, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the dismissal of a gallery’s lawsuit seeking insurance coverage for its losses caused by COVID-19 shutdown orders.  The Second Circuit found that, without any actual physical loss or damage to the insured’s property, there can be no claims for business interruption insurance due to government-ordered shutdowns in the wake of COVID-19. 

Barbara Kruger, Robert Storr, the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, Roy Lichtenstein Foundation, Brooklyn Museum, and others recently filed amici curiae (“friends of the court”) briefs, urging the Supreme Court to grant The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts’ petition for a writ of certiorari, arguing that the nation’s highest court should reconsider the Second Circuit Court of Appeals’ decision against the Foundation in a well-publicized copyright case. We discuss these amici briefs here.

What do Lisa Yuskavage, Carolee Schneemann, and Madonna have in common? Instagram removed posts about their artistry because the images depicted the female nipple. In this blog post, we discuss the issue and Instagram’s nudity policy.