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Protectable “Art”: Urinals, Bananas, And Shredders, Richard H. Chused

Fordham Intellectual Property, Media and Entertainment Law Journal

Creative souls have long played with our imaginations, as well as our tastes, about what art may be. The resulting absurdist, dada, and everyday object art forces us to step back and ask a few intellectual property questions about what this art has done, undone, or reconstructed in the copyright world. The Copyright Act grants protection to “original works of authorship fixed in any tangible medium of expression, now known or later developed, from which they can be perceived, reproduced, or otherwise communicated, either directly or with the aid of a machine or device.” This Article explores how pranksterism, eccentricity, …