What Can the Jeff Koons Lawsuit Teach Us About Copyright Law? (via Freakonomics Blog)

What was Koons thinking? Maybe Koons was mischievously attempting to point out how absurd copyright law can be — after all, he’s been copyright’s victim on three occasions.  But whatever his motivation in filing suit, it points out a larger problem with copyright law.  Copyright grants limited property rights in original works of creative expression.  It does so to induce creators to produce new works, while at the same time maintaining the widest possible opportunity for people to experience those works.  Copyright is not an unlimited right, however.  It is carefully hedged — there is no copyright, for example, in ideas, and there are many uses of copyrighted works that qualify as fair and therefore do not violate copyright.

This case represented a rare instance where the rights holder was actually suing to induce the seller to stop selling the product altogether, as Koons did not want anyone thinking that the sellers product was associated with his portfolio.  The media attention the suit garnered certainly made this point clear even if the court didn’t side with Koons, and points to the challenging nuances of how copyright law works. In art, where the ideas that support the creation of a work, and even raise its market value, this case poses a pertinent philosophical question.  Does the creation of a good that strongly references an artwork, but is not associated, decrease the relative value of the work by making it common, even generic, in the minds of consumers? Conversely, the question could also be posed antithetically looking at the potential for increased value. 

J N O M I C S