Last week, the U.S. Copyright Office announced that it has opened an inquiry into a federal resale royalty bill for visual artists that was proposed at the end of last year by legislators, suggesting it has a shot at finding its way into law. Read More
After suffering a loss in a California district court last month, artists suing auction houses for resale royalties they argue they are owed under state law won a minor legal skirmish on Wednesday. Oddly, their success was the result of having their motion denied by another district court judge.
Earlier this month, Jacqueline Nguyen, a California district court judge who now works at the appellate level, ruled against Chuck Close and other artists and estates who were suing Christie’s, Sotheby’s and eBay for not paying them the five percent royalties that state law requires from secondary-market sales. In her ruling, Judge Nguyen argued that the state’s resale royalties act violates the Commerce Clause of the Constitution since it claimed to cover sales in other states. Read More
A California court has handed a defeat to Chuck Close and his artist colleagues suing Christie’s and Sotheby’s, attempting to obtain millions of dollars in resale royalties they argue they are owed under state law. According to Thompson Reuters, Judge Jacqueline Nguyen, an appeals court judging sitting in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, ruled that California’s resale royalty act violates the United State Constitution’s Commerce Clause, which affords the federal government with the power to regulate economic activity between states. Read More
As artists continue to duel with auction houses in court over resale royalties they say they are owed under a California statute, New York Congressman Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) and Wisconsin Senator Herb Kohl (D-WI) today introduced a bill that would create resale royalty rights under federal law. Read More
New provisions in the United Kingdom’s artist resale royalty rights law are set to take effect on Jan. 1, 2012, allowing the hiers of artists to collect royalties on secondary-market sales of artworks for 70 years after the death of an artist, and Damien Hirst is pumped.
Mr. Hirst told Artlyst:
“I’m pleased that Read More
CARFAC, a group that lobbies on behalf of Canadian artists, is calling on the country’s government to enact a resale royalty law that would guarantee artists a five-percent cut when one of their artworks is resold, CBC reports. Read More
“I’ve been working my ass off for you to make that profit?” the artist Robert Rauschenberg said to collector Robert Scull in 1973 as he shoved him after an auction at Sotheby Parke Bernet, at which Mr. Scull sold a number of contemporary artworks for sums far exceeding what he had initially paid. The artists who had produced the works, of course, received nothing.
Three years later, California governor Jerry Brown signed into law the California Resale Royalties Act, which required people selling art to pay five percent of the sales price to the artist, if certain requirements were met. Today, the law is not frequently enforced, and, based on interviews with art market players, not completely understood. However, the law has been thrust into the news of late thanks to two lawsuits. Read More
