Jeff Koons copyright lawsuit

Celebrity artist Jeff Koons is involved in a copyright lawsuit, which is not unusual for an artist who regularly appropriates images from popular culture for his artwork.

What is unusual this time is that Koons is a plaintiff, suing San Francisco gallery/gift shop Park Life for selling balloon animal book ends.

Koons claims that the bookends violate his copyright for his famous Balloon Dog sculpture, a ten-foot-tall rendition of balloon animals familiar to most people who have seen a clown perform at a birthday party.

IBM's Meta-Patent

There was an interesting article at Slate this week about IBM's patent application for a patent management system. The system, which would manage IBMs intellectual property portfolio, speaks to the enormous importance of intellectual property to a large corporation and to the increasing complexity of managing IP.

Happy (Belated) Public Domain Day!

I am gradually catching up on my reading here, and I caught this interesting post from Jill Hurst-Wahl's Digitization 101 blog about works entering the public domain on January 1st, the day that copyright protection expires for, this year, works of authors who died in 1940, including  F. Scott Fitzgerald, Marcus Garvey, and Emma Goldman!

The post also points towards a tantalizing page from Duke's Center for the Study of Public Domain, showing what works would have passed into the public domain had Congress not extended copyright terms in the controversial 1978 Copyright Act, including Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (not this edition, but the original play), Horton Hears a Who!, and the movie On the Waterfront.

Wallace's Great Inventions

If the winter weather (or anything else) is getting you down, have a look at this great invention.

This is part of a great series from Aardman Animation called "Cracking Contraptions," featuring exquisite Rube Goldberg-esque inventions courtesy of window-washer/amateur inventor/cheese enthusiast Wallace and his companion Gromit. 

I came across this while looking for this clip that I remembered from Aardman's 1989 feature "The Wrong Trousers," which I was reminded of when I noticed a sale on Wensleydale cheese at my local market.  Wensleydale is, of course, Wallace's favorite cheese.

SF Eats indeed!