Athletes and entertainers are people, too. Albeit, incredibly talented people, but deserving of the same treatment with dignity and respect as how we would want ourselves to be treated. For better or worse, sometimes their...more
NFTs are extremely hot right now. In March 2021, the digital artist Beeple made history when he sold his NFT of digital art for $69.3 million through Christie’s auction house. Jack Dorsey sold his first tweet as an NFT for...more
Welcome back to another week in the Spotlight. It is truly remarkable to think that it has (already? only?) been one year since the World Health Organization’s declaration of the COVID-19 pandemic, shuttering sports arenas,...more
In a recent decision by the New York County Commercial Division (Borrok, J.), the Court held that New York law, not Swiss law, applies to a dispute involving the ownership of the storied Princie Diamond – an extremely rare...more
Perhaps the most important aspect of any case is determining what your damages are. After all, isn’t that generally the point of all our efforts – to try to recover the most amount of money?...more
Addressing the California Resale Royalties Act (CRRA), the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit upheld a district court’s dismissal of a plaintiff’s CRRA claims concerning resale royalties that postdated the 1976...more
The Ninth Circuit recently was called upon to decide awarding attorney’s fees in a case where artists were suing for unpaid royalties under the California Resale Royalties Act (“CRRA”). In the case, Close v. Sotheby’s, Inc....more
As previously discussed on this blog, the validity of the California Resale Royalty Act (the “RRA,” Civil Code Section 986), a 1976 law that requires resellers of fine art to pay a royalty of 5 percent to the artists behind...more
Addressing the constitutionality of California’s Resale Royalty Act, Cal. Civ. Code § 986 (“the Act”), the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit held that a portion of the Act violated the dormant Commerce Clause of the...more
In a partial victory for artists such as Chuck Close and the Sam Francis Foundation—and for other visual artists who sold early works for rent money before establishing their name and value—the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals...more
Readers will recall that in 2012 the U.S. District Court struck down the California Resale Royalties Act, holding that the 1970s-era law violated the Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution....more