Category Archives: Copyright

To quote or not to quote – that is the question

Posted on: November 7, 2019 by Alexander Herman

As those who have followed our courses (especially our IP Diploma) will know, a big fanfare is often made about the possibilities of the ‘quotation’ exception introduced into UK copyright law five years ago. For institutions that are often users of copyright-protected material, like museums, galleries, archives and libraries, the new exception came with a […]

Meet our Alumni: Chris Sutherns, Sales Executive at Tate Images

Posted on: July 15, 2019 by Kiri Cragin Folwell

Chris Sutherns, Sales Executive at Tate Images participated in our Diploma in Intellectual Property and Collections. Read about his background working with the V&A, British Museum and Tate as well as how the IAL course helped open doors for his career.  Can you tell us a little bit about your career and background? I’m a […]

News from the latest IAL Study Forum

Posted on: July 8, 2019 by Emily Gould

A fascinating day was enjoyed by all who braved London’s hottest day so far this year to attend IAL’s latest Study Forum held on 29th June. Topics ranged from the origins of modern copyright law to international laws on restitution to the treatment of human remains. Dr Elena Cooper (Leverhulme Early Career Fellow, CREATe) gave a […]

Copyright and lessons from the past

Posted on: June 10, 2019 by Emily Gould

Dr Elena Cooper is an IAL member and the author of Art and Modern Copyright: The Contested Image (CUP, 2018). She will be speaking at a forthcoming IAL Study Forum on 29th June 2019. In the meantime, she writes below on the intriguing topic of the development of copyright law, and how it reflects changes […]

The incredible copyright legacy of Vivian Maier

Posted on: May 24, 2019 by Alexander Herman

For those who haven’t heard of her, Vivian Maier was a secret photographer. She lived and worked in Chicago throughout the 50s, 60s and 70s largely as a nanny in well-to-do suburbs. She had no close family of her own and died in 2009 with little fanfare. But she had spent most of her adult […]

Reacting to extremist German political propaganda – a moral rights issue?

Posted on: May 10, 2019 by Julia Rodrigues Casella Hommes

A lot of commotion was caused recently by a German right-wing party’s choice of political propaganda: the use of a 19thcentury painting with a very controversial slogan splashed across it. We are talking, of course, of Alternative fur Deutschland (AfD) and Jean-Léon Gérôme’s Slave Market, a painting from 1866 currently on loan to the Clark […]

Copyright in AI works – what can we learn from our forebears?

Posted on: November 14, 2018 by Emily Gould

  Readers of this blog will have seen the post last week about Portrait of Edmond de Belamy, a piece of computer generated art created by the Obvious Collective through Artificial Intelligence, which recently sold at auction for USD 432,500. Amongst the challenges posed by AI technology for copyright law, is the question of how […]

Art, AI and copyright

Posted on: November 9, 2018 by Alexander Herman

A big splash was made when a lot sold at Christie’s New York last month for $432,500. That sort of amount is usually small change for the major international auction house, but not when it comes to a particular sort of artwork: one made by artificial intelligence (or AI). In fact, this was reported to […]

Art and Copyright: what can we learn from the past?

Posted on: October 29, 2018 by Emily Gould

Who does the modern law of copyright seek to protect? We are familiar today with the claim that artistic copyright protects artists and, perhaps, users of copyright works. Roll back 150 years, to the nineteenth century, and artistic copyright was also understood in a number of other ways, which are long forgotten today. For instance, […]

Museums and the Revised Digital Single Market Directive

Posted on: October 2, 2018 by Holly Woodhouse

On the 12th September 2018, the European Parliament adopted its revised negotiating position on the Digital Single Market Directive, including the controversial internet ‘link tax’ and ‘upload filter’, whilst adding some safeguards to protect small businesses and freedom of expression. Significantly, there are parts of this proposal that can have an impact on the museum world in […]