<
https://www.techdirt.com/2023/06/20/court-finally-dismisses-bananas-copyright-lawsuit-over-bananas-taped-to-walls/>
"A year ago, we wrote about an unfortunate decision by a judge rejecting a
motion to dismiss in a copyright lawsuit regarding bananas taped to walls.
There was, of course, the high profile “banana taped to wall” artwork by
Maurizio Cattelan that got tons of public attention at Art Basel in 2019 when
it sold for $120,000 (and when someone walked over and pulled it off the wall
and ate it, in a bit of counterprograming). Cattelan was the defendant in this
lawsuit as some other guy, Joe Morford, claimed that he had done it first with
an artwork called “Banana & Orange” and that Cattelan’s banana (which,
officially, was called “Comedian”) infringed on his work.
As we noted all of this was ridiculous. Copyright applies to the specific
expression, not the idea, and nothing in this came even close to being
infringing. It surprised us that the judge rejected the motion to dismiss,
though as we noted in the original article, that didn’t mean the case wouldn’t
ultimately get dismissed. It’s just that first they’d have to go through
discovery.
And, now that’s happened, and both sides filed for summary judgment, leading
the judge to finally get it right and dismiss the case."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
