Thomas Friedman and his publisher, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, have been sued over the cover on his latest book, The World is Flat. (Interestingly enough I see Amazon UK have "No Image Available" for the cover at the moment).
Freidman used an image from a poster he'd bought many years ago, of a painting done by artist Ed Miracle, showing boats sailing over the edge of the world, which featured the caption "I told you so." His publisher had duly licenced the right to use the image from the poster company. The poster company, unfortunately didn't hold the copyright in the image. They only had a licence to sell about a thousand posters and that licence expired in 1996.
The author said: "We didn't try to cheat anybody. We did it [purchased the rights] through normal channels. We thought this was all legal, kosher, and right. I feel bad that this happened, and I couldn't feel more bad for him [Miracle]."
The artist's agent, Rose von Perbandt, said "Is there no one in the press that sees the irony of a book on globalization—whose author stresses the need to protect against piracy and strengthen intellectual property protection—that is infringing the copyrights of the artist whose work was used on the cover?"
It's a fair point, which goes to show that even those with an interest in strong intellectual property rights, including Pulitzer Prize winning journalists/authors, can sometimes accidently get entangled in the complexity of the current IP landscape.
No comments:
Post a Comment