Copy cat

Following up on last week’s bull story, a reader pointed us to a New Zealand copyright case that hung on the same issues. In 2007 sculptor John Radford took clothing manufacturer Hallensteins to court for using a photograph of his work Tip in Ponsonby’s Western Park on a t-shirt and breaching his copyright. The court decided that although a 3-D copy of the work would be a breach of copyright, a 2-D reproduction was fine. Auckland law firm Hesketh Henry neatly sum up the New Zealand situation on their website, “For the ordinary person this means you can take photographs of famous (and not so famous), buildings, structures and sculptures in the public domain and be comfortable that, if you use this image on a plate, T-shirt or postcard home, you are entitled to do so.”
Thanks for that B.