Banana, tape and what makes art original enough to claim copyright

IP News Challenge

By Beverly A. Berneman

BEVERLY A. BERNEMAN is a partner and chair of the Intellectual Property Practice Group at Golan Christie Taglia LLP. Beverly works with businesses to protect their patents, trademarks, copyrights and trade secrets. Reach her at baberneman@gct.law.

Posted September 22, 2022 11:34 AM

Question: Can a banana with duct tape infringe on the copyright of a banana and an orange with duct tape?Discussion: Copyright infringement requires the unauthorized copying of an original work of authorship. The plaintiff, Joe Morford, created a work that consisted of a banana and an orange duct taped to a green background with masking tape added around the edges of the background. He published his work on his social media and his website.The defendant, Maurizio Cattelan, created a work that consisted of an overripe …

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