Most of you are probably familiar with the work of William Wegman. He takes Weimaraner dogs, dresses them up like people or othe animals, and takes photographs. He is fairly well know, has a few books published, etc. (Check out a few of his pics url=“http://www.greatmodernpictures.com/pwegman.htm”]here )
Now, there is a new Honda minivan commercial on television that has a bunch of Weimaraners, dressed up like a family in a minivan, and is an obvious bite on Wegman’s style. Would Honda need to get permission to do something like this?
I guess it boils down further to how far you can go with copyrighting an idea or a concept? Could I dress up a baby like a watermelon or a bumblebee, take pictures of it and use them for my gain, or would I have a lawsuit from Anne Geddes on my hands?
Interesting, I didn’t know that (obviously). But lets just say for the sake of argument that Wegman didn’t direct it. Is there a feasible lawsuit there? What if Honda had used Dobermans instead?
My main point in asking is this: Where the line between “hey, that looks exactly like artist X’s work”, and “Hmm, that may or may not be derivative of artist X”.
You would probably need an attorney specializing in these issues for a definitive answer.
I personally would say that if I saw the Honda commercial and someone told me that William Wegman did not agree to this portrayal, I would declare it to be copying his work and a legal violation. The same way as if Honda had (for example) look-alikes for the characters from the TV show Seinfeld driving around in the van and arguing.
that dick-weed “artist” Jeff Koons ( married to the Italian porn star/member of parlement “Ciccolina”) ripped off a local Bay area photographers work to make a kitchy sculpture called " string of puppies" and got ripped in court for it, BIGTIME, as I recall…he defended it saying it was an INDICTMENT of kitchy , cutsy , overly sentimentalized
crap…the court did not see it that way…
quote:See, e.g., Rogers v. Koons, 960 F.2d 301 (2d Cir.), cert. denied, 113 S. Ct. 365 (1992).
In this case, the defendant’s sculpture entitled “String of Puppies” was closely modeled after the plaintiff’s photograph entitled “Puppies.” The 2d Circuit found the sculpture to be an infringing use and further held the fair-use defense inapplicable despite defendant’s contention that the primary purpose of the work was social commentary.
and quote:… court decision in sculptor Jeff Koons’ String of Puppies case (Koons’ exact sculptural
realization of a copyrighted photograph was found to be unfair due to lack of comment and original contribution
despite his intention to comment on popular taste)
A while back on this message board we had the issue come up of just how different an art work has to be to claim it as a new piece of art. The case in point was a Website called the ‘Dysfunctional Family Circus’. Here, the very tame cartoon ‘Family Circus’ by Bill Keene was printed (and credited to Keene) with no caption and people were invited to post their own captions. As you might have guessed, this attracted all kinds of wonderful entries ranging from anal sex and incest to just about every conceivable crime you could imagine someone commiting. Then Keene found out about it and summoned the lawyers. A meek attempt was made at saying it was a parody of Keene’s work, and that the Website operater could not control what people posted (smells like a Napster argument). But for all the flag waving that occured, when court action was threatened, the page disappeared overnight and now has a lamer version where people write in captions to random photographs that is not nearly as funny.
The website in question was SpinnWebe (www.spinnwebe.com) and DFC was one ‘feature’ on the site. Unfortunately, this site is currently changing ISPs right now, so you can’t read the account of DFC’s demise yourself, but here’s what I remember of it. Although there was some threat of legal action, DFC ended when Bill Keane himself called up the site’s creator (known as Spinn), talked with him for a while about how much the strip meant to him, and nicely asked that DFC be stopped. Apparently, Spinn found Bill to be just too nice and reasonable of a man to refuse (honestly). Now isn’t that a relatively happy ending?