Happens quite often. And probably will continue.

An Italian commercial tribunal in Bologna has recognized the Ferrari 250 GTO car not only as a classic, but as a work of art that is entirely original and fully protected by intellectual property rights.

Given that only 36 of these GTOs were produced between 1962 and 1964 (with one selling last year at auction for $48.4 million), another company in the northern city of Modena thought it a good idea to produce 250 replicas. Obviously that’s not gonna happen.

Does anyone remember that interesting, and wrongly decided, moral rights case in Texas some 9 years ago?

Story here.

The artwork did not violate the photographer Lynn Goldsmith’s copyright, according to a ruling that sided with the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.

Haven’t had time to read the opinion, but if not appealed will certainly be controversial. More here. Background here.

On land art,

Purchasing and leasing land, figuring out what the legalities were; sometimes the legalities were: ‘Don’t talk about it, we don’t really know the answer!’ To build these objects was always an exercise in working in fields well outside of the visual arts. To maintain them, to steward them now, continues to be that.”

More here.

NY Times op-ed by Harvard Law School professor, Ronald S. Sullivan Jr.

In a win for advocates of free speech, the Supreme Court struck down a ban on trademarking words and symbols that are “immoral” or “scandalous.”

NPR here.

After Olive sued the university, the university pushed for the case to be dismissed because the public institution has sovereign immunity, which protects state government entities from a variety of lawsuits. Olive’s side responded by arguing that the copyright infringement was an unlawful “taking” under the state’s constitution, which prohibits the government from taking private property without adequately compensating the owner.

So it appears a Texas court doesn’t think copyright infringement is a taking. I think the “takings” argument will convince a U.S. court in the near future. Until then, here’s another interesting article via Reason.com on qualified immunity (“which essentially allows public officials to violate a constitutional right as long as the right has not yet been clearly established in the courts.”).