Buffalo-sized copyright
p2pnet.net News:- “A copyright is a set of exclusive rights granted by government for a limited period of time to protect the particular form, way or manner in which an idea or information is expressed.
That’s the Wiki definition.
Would long-dead Oglala war chief Crazy Horse (1842-1877) agree?
“When saddle maker Mike Bray agreed to create a buffalo-sized art project for a South Dakota old-west fest, the last thing he expected was a buffalo-sized headache,” says a story in the Monticello Times.
His life-sized bison, Spirit of the Plains”, has images of Plains Indians, including Crazy Horse, painted on it. But, “moments after his submitted work, and 18 others, had been blessed by a Lakota Chief in a traditional ceremony,” he was told he was guilty of copyright infringement.
It seems Crazy Horse’s name and image have both been copyrighted by one of Crazy Horse’s grandsons.
“It got blessed by an 85-year-old Lakota chief,” the Monticello Times quotes Bray as saying. I`ve got to think that`s important, so I`m not going to just paint over it. I can`t sell him. But I can keep him.
But where there’s a will there’s a way, as Rik Lambers points out in his blog, CoCo.
“Instead of painting over the image he crossed back home through the US, rush-ordered ‘an emergency-replacement fiberglass buffalo’ and created a second piece,” he says.
Cheers, Rik, and welcome back : )
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See:-
Monticello Times – Supreme Court denies Lexmark’s hearing request, June 6, 2005
CoCo – Crazy Horse Copyright Breeds Buffalo June 6, 2005
June 7th, 2005 at 8:42 pm
I think this is a bit confusing. While you can have a trademark on a name, it is a fact so you can’t copyright it. As to trying to assert a monopoly on all expressions of an image, copyright doesn’t offer that either — only an exclusive right on a specific expression of an image (IE: specific painting, specific photograph, etc).
If not a hoax, then is this an idle threat that has no backing in law?