Mar
16
Slap down for Koons
As virtually any clown can attest, no one owns the idea of making a balloon dog, and the shape created by twisting a balloon into a dog-like form is part of the public domain.
- Jedediah Wakefield, lawyer, quoted in Cat Weaver, ‘Is a Cease and Desist About Irony, Hypocrisy or Legal Strategy?’, 10 March 2011, Hyperallergic, < http://hyperallergic.com/20398/cease-and-desist-strategy/>.
AW: For context. Jeff Koons’s lawyers (Jones Day) sent a cease-and-desist letter to Park Life, a San Francisco shop and gallery, to try to prevent them from selling balloon dog bookends, claiming that they were too similar to Koons’s sculptures. Jedediah Wakefield, of Fenwick and West, took on Park Life’s case pro bono and Koons’s lawyers soon dropped the case. As Jamie Alexander of Park Life wrote on his blog: ‘isn’t his ENTIRE FUCKING CAREER based on co-opting other peoples’ work????’
