About Hummels
At this point, some readers may say, huh? How can a statute of limitations for copyright infringement bar a state law claim for an accounting of profits between co-authors brought under diversity jurisdiction? The answer according to the majority is that the accounting cause of action was predicated on there being co-authorship status; if there can be no such co-authorship claim because the statute of limitations bars even a facial assertion of co-authorship status, there can be no possible accounting cause of action. The majority found the copyright limitations indeed barred the co-authorship claim, and hence affirmed dismissal of the claim.
You know you have crossed a threshold when you start finding copyright law funny. I couldn't read Patry's post about the I.P. issues surrounding Hummels without thinking of About Schmidt. There's also a funny (to me at least) bit about Hummel photographer knock-offs.
Spam Gate
One thing that always bothers me about the weekend is being forced to watch Fox to get local coverage. However, yesterday evening there was an interesting story about a local “meat sculptor” who entertains herself during the cold weather by making spam candles, hot-dog necklaces and such. I looked at the Fox web site to see if there was any mention of the story or web links and found that they do not update the site on weekends. So I googled around, and found the wonderful sculpture displayed above (completely unrelated to the story).
The spam sculpture of Anish Kapoor’s Cloud Gate warmed my heart. It’s from 2005, the same year I presented a paper on the legal and social controversies surrounding public photography of this sculpture at the Sweetland writing conference in Ann Arbor, Michigan. The paper is supposed to be included in a forthcoming anthology. I wish I had known of this fabulous sculpture then; I might have included it in my presentation.
