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Court Rules Photo of Memorial Violates Copyright

Posted by kdawson on from the stamp-of-disapproval dept.

WhatDoIKnow sends in a story about an appeals court ruling in a singular case that might have the effect of narrowing "fair use" rights for transformative uses of artworks. "The sculptor who designed the Korean War memorial [in Washington DC] brought suit against the Postal Service after a photograph of his work was used on a postage stamp. Though first ruled protected by 'fair use,' on appeal the court ruled in favor (PDF) of the sculptor, Frank Gaylord, now 85."

4 of 426 comments (clear)

  1. Re:isn't the memorial already in the public domain by nedlohs · · Score: 5, Informative

    from TFA:

    "she went over all of the available documents and found that they expressly kept those [IP] rights with Gaylord"

    So no the idiots at the Army Corps of Engineers who signed the contract for this didn't in fact get ownership of anything other than the physical sculpture.

  2. This will get appealed again. by fluffy99 · · Score: 5, Informative

    The underlying problem is that copyrights were improperly assigned to Gaylord in the first place. Being under contract to the govt, those copyrights should have been assigned to the govt. In fact the contracting officer has been and still is demanding that those improperly assigned copyrights be turned over. The court wasn't allowed to challenge the validity of those copyrights and had to take them at face value.

  3. Re:Stupid bureaucrats by Dachannien · · Score: 5, Informative

    From the court decision, Mr. Gaylord was paid $775k by the United States for his part of the work, and the primary contractor (who hired Mr. Gaylord directly) was paid over $5M (p. 5 of dissent).

    Personally, I'm rather confused as to how this case turned out this way. The dissent offers a very strong argument for why the government already has a license to use the artwork however it sees fit, and it also notes a federal law which should disqualify a claim against the government in this case. The US should at least try to get the CAFC to hear this case en banc, because it seems that the majority in this case overlooked some important details.

  4. Re:isn't the memorial already in the public domain by Volante3192 · · Score: 5, Informative

    USPS WAS operating in the green actually for most of the decade, up til 2007 when the increased gas prices really started to impact the bottom line. When you operate the largest vehicle fleet in the world, even a penny increase is going to be massively damaging..

    http://www.usps.com/history/anrpt07/summary.htm

    So yeah, it's fun to mock USPS, but it's not often warranted.