Copyright infringement matter involving Jeff Koons

Back on April 1, 2012, "60 Minutes" noted a Jeff Koons piece could go for $25 million.
[See http://ipbiz.blogspot.com/2012/04/60-minutes-on-april-1-2012.html]

On December 15, 2015, The Guardian noted of Koons:


Jeff Koons, a US pop artist whose works can fetch millions, is facing allegations he used a New York photographer’s commercial photo from the 1980s in a painting without permission or compensation, according to a lawsuit filed Monday.

The photographer, Mitchel Gray, said in the complaint filed in Manhattan federal court that Koons reproduced his photo, which depicts a man sitting beside a woman painting on a beach with an easel, “nearly unchanged and in its entirety”.



The Guardian also noted


His work Balloon Dog (Orange) sold for $58.4m in 2013, the highest price for a living artist’s work sold at auction.

Gray’s photo was published in an advertisement for Gordon’s Dry Gin in 1986. Later that year, the complaint alleged, Koons reproduced the photo in a painting called I Could Go For Something Gordon’s. It was part of a series of liquor-themed paintings called Luxury and Degradation.



link: http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/dec/15/jeff-koons-sued-allegations-he-appropriated-1980s-gin-advertisement

**Of relevance to the Koons story is the IPBiz post

Iconic sailor/nurse kiss of "Unconditional Surrender" returns to Hamilton, NJ


See also Copyright violation