Sunday, June 23, 2019

"US judge tosses lawsuit against glass artist Dale Chihuly"

It was a co-authorship claim brought by a former studio assistant who, as many studio assistants do, helped in the creation of certain works.  The court held, on summary judgment, that, because (1) "Chihuly superintended the production of the works and had unilateral control over the finished products" and (2) "no reasonable fact finder could conclude that plaintiff harbored even a subjective intent to be a co-author, much less that the parties objectively manifested such an intent" ("plaintiff never identified himself as the author of the works, he raised no objections when defendant failed to identify him as co-author, and he made no claim of authorship prior to the 2017 demand letter that preceded this action"), there was no co-authorship.  Story here.