Insights

Consigning Your Art

Janet Fries and Katherine Howard-Fudge

Consignment agreements are contracts between a gallery and an art owner that allow the gallery to display and/or sell the artwork. Like a loan agreement, a consignment agreement does not transfer ownership rights to the gallery and specifies that ownership transfers from the artist directly to the purchaser upon payment in full. These agreements typically […]

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Art Protection in the Event of Natural Disasters

Janet Fries and Katherine Howard-Fudge

Art is both a cultural and financial asset, making its physical protection crucial. The Los Angeles wildfires in January 2025 underscored the importance of safeguarding works of art. This wasn’t the first wake-up call for threats to art. For example, Hurricane Sandy in October 2012 flooded New York City’s Chelsea art district, leading to numerous […]

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Insuring Your Art: Protecting Its Value for Your Peace of Mind

Janet Fries and Katherine Howard-Fudge

If you have art assets, you must have appropriate, up-to-date insurance. If your art collection is valuable, having a fine art policy rather than including art on a homeowner’s insurance policy may be worth the added expense. Unlike a standard insurance policy that may include art coverage, a fine art insurance policy has significantly fewer […]

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E-Recordation: Protecting Your Intellectual Property at the Border

Carolyn Wimbly Martin and Katherine Howard-Fudge

Counterfeit goods enter the United States each year in mass, posing health risks and undermining brand value. Recording your products with U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) can offer valuable protection if they are vulnerable to foreign counterfeiting. CBP cannot seize or destroy counterfeit goods at the border without a registered trademark and recordation. Recordation […]

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What Trademark Owners Need to Know in 2025: Tariffs and Excusable Nonuse of Trademarks

As of this writing, the Trump Administration’s tariff policies remain in flux, with multiple changes to the affected countries, tariff rates, and the duration of tariffs which will be imposed on foreign imports. Therefore, both large and small businesses are assessing the impact of the increased tariffs. One unintended consequence of higher tariffs is that […]

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Generative AI: Fact versus Expression

Carolyn Wimbly Martin and Katherine Howard-Fudge

Copyright law protects original works of authorship including literary, dramatic, musical, and artistic works, such as poetry, novels, movies, songs, computer software and architecture. Copyright law rewards innovation and promotes the progress of the sciences by excluding facts, ideas, systems, procedures or methods of operation from copyrightability, although it may protect the way these things […]

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The De Minimis Doctrine: When Is Copying Too Trivial?

Carolyn Wimbly Martin and Katherine Howard-Fudge

Although infrequently discussed in the case law, the de minimis doctrine is an important aspect of copyright law that protects creators from claims of infringement for uses of the works of another that would otherwise be considered substantially similar. The doctrine, which allows instances of trivial copying which would otherwise be infringement, comes from the legal […]

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USPTO Home Address Rule

Carolyn Wimbly Martin and Katherine Howard-Fudge

A 2019 United States Patent and Trademark Office (“USPTO”) rule making domicile address reporting on trademark applications more stringent spurred concern regarding the policy’s privacy implications. However, on October 7, 2024, the U.S. Supreme Court denied a petition for certiorari in Chestek PLLC v. Vidal, 2024 U.S. Lexis 3347 (2024), leaving in place the domicile […]

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