Court Case: Art Rogers V. Jeff Koons

A court case rose in 1991 that a man named Jeff Koons had stole a photograph by Art Rogers and made it into a statue. Originally Art Rogers had taken a black and white picture of a couple holding several puppies. He took the picture to use on greeting cards and other merchandise. Then Jeff Koons seen the picture on a postcard and wanted to make a sculpture based on the card for an art show with the theme of banality of everyday items. He then went on to remove the copyright label off of Rogers’ post card he then gave it to his assistants with instructions on how to model the sculpture. He had asked that as much detail be copied as possible, yet the puppies were to be made blue, as well as their noses exaggerated, and flowers to be added to the hair of the man and woman. After it was made he named it “String of Puppies” and later sold three of them for $367,000. Rogers later discovered this and sued Koons and the Sonnabend Gallery for copyright infringement.

Yet he attempted to claim fair use by parody. The court then found both “substantial similarity” they also found that Koons had access to the picture. The similarity was so close that the average person would be able to recognize the copying. Therefore, the sculpture was found to be a copy of the picture Rogers took. The court then rejected the parody argument. Koons simply could have constructed his parody of that general type of art without copying Rogers' specific work. Yet Koons was not commenting on Rogers' work specifically, and so his copying of that work did not fall under the fair use exception. Later the court determined that there were issues of fact and remanded the issue to the District Court. Koons and Rogers then reached a confidential