“The same people that steal credit cards are the same types of people that steal artwork[,]” according to Chris Marinello of the London-based Art Loss Register.

Donn Zaretsky clarifies some media misinformation.

Murakami left Boesky more than six years ago.  There’s no earthly reason why she should continue to print and distribute his work on her own.

On Thursday, Mr. Ramnarine, 58, was indicted on charges he used Mr. Johns’s mold to surreptitiously make a bronze sculpture that he attributed to Mr. Johns and tried to sell for $11 million, according to the United States attorney in Manhattan.

Via The NY Times.

Claiming fraud, two Metropolitan Museum of Art members filed a lawsuit in the New York State Supreme Court yesterday alleging that the historically free, public institution has been deceiving visitors into paying entry fees.

We have to say it’s not just the sign, or lack thereof, that makes one pay a “suggested fee.” Sometimes it’s just guilt. But with the “fiscal cliff” looming, we can’t say we totally disagree with the plaintiffs.

Christie’s told The Art Newspaper it took seriously matters of trademark infringement and wanted to protect the public and its clients from deception. “We encourage clients and the public to exercise due diligence when selecting auction houses to work with,” the company said in a statement.

Lawyers acting on behalf of Chritrs argued that although the two company names were pronounced almost identically, the company’s marketing mainly took place in print form and not verbally[.]

Via The Art Newspaper. I wrote a bit about the increasing issues between the “east” and the “west” earlier this year via Art Asia Pacific.

The New York State Supreme Court ruled in favor of Sotheby’s today, denying art dealer Marc Jancou’s claim that the auction house broke its contract when they withdrew his Cady Noland aluminum print from a sale late last year.

Via Artinfo.

Well, in the last thirty years, there has been a shift from a labor economy to a knowledge economy. Consequently, intangible assets (with IPR being chief among them) have emerged as the most powerful asset class, overtaking more traditional capital assets such as real estate, plant and equipment.  … Thus, if the civil rights movement is to continue – a movement that was about righting economic disparities – focusing on IP as the 21st century economic rights makes sense.

I’ve noted and written about this before, and interestingly, after Obama’s re-election, there was this interesting blog entry by Chris Bickerton and Alex Gourevitch about the disconnect between Obama’s crafting of identity politics and the economy. Indeed, the rebirth of identity politics is disturbing enough, highlighting at best a regression to 1993 and, at worst, a championing of the “victim” mentality.

What is interesting to note about Raymond Millien’s article, The Real McCoy: Should Intellectual Property Rights be the New Civil Rights in America?, is that it doesn’t look to simply reignite the definitions of “minority” for social, cultural, and political gain. Rather, it addresses what Bickerton and Gourevitch observe by connecting the economic and socio-cultural disparities via intellectual property. By doing so, it indirectly attacks the pro-free culture movement, unveiling what is to most either unseen or, if seen, too disturbing to address: the fact that the pro-free culture movement is in fact a neo-liberal crusade willing to trade economic parity for cultural pipe dreams.