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Last week on our New York business litigation blog, we reviewed the case of a decades-old work of art whose ownership has been challenged in court. The high-profile intellectual property dispute served to illustrate important legal principles for our Manhattan readers. But some may be left wondering: is protection of intellectual property really something that your average artist or creative individual, who may be struggling just to get by, needs to worry about?
The fact is that New York is home to an incredibly diverse creative population. Many people here devote themselves to making a living off of their creative work. It may be visual art, like the painting we discussed previously. It may be music, whether performed in a symphony orchestra or in a subway station. It may be a piece of performance art, fashion, or any other type of creative work — high or low, no matter what, it’s important to protect your rights to what’s yours.
Arthur R. Lehman, LLC even has experience representing a Tibetan rug manufacturer in a case where a competing company used their designs and infringed on their copyrights. For our client, we didn’t just win an award for damages. The court also ordered that the competitor permanently stop using the designs, pay our client’s legal fees, and destroy all of the rugs based on those designs. While in this case we arranged for the rugs to go to charity instead, in other cases, it may be more important to destroy infringing works, and we have a track record of getting it done.
Remember, the work you produce today may not be worth a fortune the minute it goes out the door. But in the future, anything is possible, and the harder you work today for your livelihood and success, the more likely someone else will try to profit off of your work tomorrow. Fortunately, if someone violates your intellectual property rights, the law is on your side — and so is Arthur R. Lehman, LLC.
