Miami Lawyer Blog

The Law Offices of Aaron Resnick, P.A. is extremely proud to have developed a practice group focusing on art and cultural property law. The firm handles all types of art litigation and alternate forms of dispute resolution, and also actively represent and counsel clients in corporate and commercial art law matters. Recently the firm was engaged in an action with Sotheby's' Auction house, which resulted in a favorable resolution for its client. According to Attorney Aaron Resnick, Art law is actually a combination of legal concepts geared towards coping with the issues related to art creation, ownership and transactions, and is an amalgam of contracts law, trusts and estates law, litigation and statutory law at different levels. In fact, the Framers of the Constitution acknowledged the importance of the arts when they wrote that Congress shall have the power "[t]o promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries" (Art. I, § 8).

In practice art law specialists are often litigators because many of the legal issues that arise relating to artwork are actually, at their core, adversarial legal disputes. Lawyers at the Law Offices of Aaron Resnick, P.A. represent buyers and sellers of artwork in authenticity disputes, for example, or in litigation relating to provenance. Other issues that frequently arise are those specifically relating to the artists themselves -- art law litigators often represent artists whose work has been stolen (either physically or as a matter of copyright infringement) or who seek to prevent their prior work from being destroyed.

In other instances we may provide more pre-emptive advice. The Firm is often retained to advise art sellers how they may conduct sales and how to structure their art business transactions. For example, we may draft an art gallery's consignment agreement or the terms of sale which appear on each sale invoice.

Other non-litigation art lawyers at the Firm include trust and estates experts who advise visual artists and their estates on taxation and estate planning matters such as setting up foundations and donating works of art to museums.

The clients of the Law Offices of Aaron Resnick range from art buyers or collectors to art dealers, galleries, auction houses, museums and artists themselves. According to Resnick, though many clients seek the advice of their general legal practitioner at first, many disputes are better handled by experts and those who deal with specific fine art related matters. Those matters are best referred to an art law specialist.
To keep up with all the latest in Art Law news, Resnick suggests people go to http://theartlawblog.blogspot.com/. In addition, these sites are recommended:

Resale Right
The law gives artists certain rights in their creations. William Fisher, "Theories of Intellectual Property," in Stephen Munzer, ed., New Essays in the Legal and Political Theory of Property (Cambridge University Press, 2001) is recommended for those who want to explore a sophisticated introduction to why the law recognizes property interests in intellectual products. These interests can be economic or non-economic, personality rights.
Copyright
Basics
• Copyright Crash Course: University of Texas. Includes very useful "Rules of Thumb" developed at UT.
• Copyright: an overview from the Cornell Legal Information Institute
• Note particularly the Visual Artists Rights Act (VARA), §§106, 106A, 107, and 113 of the Copyright Act
• Berne Convention [Roam around in this site; don't feel obliged to read the whole thing]
• U.S. Copyright Office, a useful site for basic information.
• A very extensive online collection of intellectual property laws is maintained by WIPO, the World Intellectual Property Organization.
Works-for-hire
• Community for Creative Non-Violence v. Reid, 490 U.S. 730 (1989)
• The Government Wants Its WPA Art Back. See also Jeanette Hendler, The W.P.A. Artists Project.
Originality
• Bridgeman Art Library
• Barry G. Szczesny, American Association of Museums, Government Affairs Counsel, April 1999 American Association of Museums Annual Meeting Presentation on Bridgeman Art Library v. Corel Corporation.
• The Bridgeman Art Library, Ltd. v. Corel Corp., 25 F. Supp. 2d 421 (S.D.N.Y. 1998) (LEXIS | WESTLAW)
• Bridgeman Art Library v. Corel Corp., 36 F. Supp. 2d 191 (S.D.N.Y. 1999) (LEXIS | WESTLAW)
Web Rights
• Kelly v. Ariba Soft Corp. [See also http://www.ditto.com/]
• Art, Copyright, and the Web Bibliography compiled by Jeanette Mills and Cynthia Caci (links updated August 2001)

Brittany Rawlings, head of the Law Offices of Aaron Resnick, P.A.'s Fashion law department, is being featured in the launch of Style Saves, Inc., a non-profit charity founded by fashion stylist Rachael Russell with The Miami Foundation, on Friday, July 15, 2011. The intimate event will feature a trendsetting fashion show held on the ground level of the SOHO Beach House in the Tiki Bar. The event is set to begin with cocktails at 8:00pm. Rawlings' jewelry line, which has been recently featured in Plum Magazine, B.Rawlings, will highlight the show. Style Saves, Inc., in collaboration with local South Florida retail stores and boutiques, seeks to imbue underprivileged students with the confidence needed to achieve their full potential by providing them with a brand-new outfit for their first day of school.

"We're giving a fresh start through fashion, and building confidence through clothes," states Russell. SOHO Beach House will sponsor the event with Hors D'oeuvres courtesy of Cecconi's and drinks by Moët & Chandon Imperial Ice. Musical entertainment will be provided by Ess & Emm.

Following the fashion show, a private reception will be held on the 8th floor club pool deck of the SOHO Beach House where luxury goods and services will be silently auctioned. All proceeds from the event will go to benefit Style Saves' students.

The Law Offices of Aaron Resnick, P.A. is one of the few Florida firms that has a practice group dedicated to Fashion Law. Fashion law is a specialized area of law that deals with intellectual property (copyright and trademark law, including brand licensing), domestic and international business transactions, textiles, merchandising, employment and labor concerns, and customs (import/export issues). Traditionally, most fashion lawyers work for established fashion and luxury goods companies in major urban commercial centers such as New York City, Paris, London and Milan. Some fashion lawyers work within the company, and others work outside the company for law firms.
Fashion Law is a quickly growing legal specialty, and several American law and design schools have dedicated clinics and courses to its study. In a 2008 article, Susan Scafidi, the first U.S. law professor ever to offer a course in Fashion Law and later Director of the Fashion Law Institute at Fordham Law, wrote that Fashion Law was only then starting to be recognized as a distinct field. Since then, Deborah McNamara at Parsons The New School for Design, and Guillermo Jimenez at the Fashion Institute of Technology at the State University of New York, have also offered courses in Fashion Law. However, such courses remain rare.

The still-emerging nature of the discipline is evident from the fact that the New York City Bar Association, located in America's fashion capital, did not have a dedicated Fashion Law Committee until June 2011.

Fashion attorneys participate in a variety of legal activities and negotiate deals for their clients. The clients may be large retail chains, haute couture labels, high-fashion models, or an unknown designers just starting out. If and when the situation arises, a fashion attorney will litigate for his or her clients in court.

Fashion houses and accessory designers both face unique challenges specific to their industry. They require attorneys who understand the nature of short seasons and ever-changing product cycles, pressures surrounding counterfeit goods, and the issues of unfair competition. Valuable assets in the fashion business consist of not only intellectual property rights, but also trade arrangements, contracts, and information technology systems. A fashion attorney's career success may depend on being able to effectively protect these assets by delivering industry-specific legal advice tailored to the clients' needs.