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What is Art? - Southwestern Law School

What is Art? - Southwestern Law School

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WHAT IS ART? 135apparent further consultation, the Committee decided that ‘a draft regulationwill be prepared for a future meeting. Th<strong>is</strong> will overturn theUK [and Dutch] National Court dec<strong>is</strong>ions’. Th<strong>is</strong> eventually becameEU Regulation 731/2010, which Valentin argues <strong>is</strong> “a patently absurdpiece of leg<strong>is</strong>lation. Adopted behind closed doors, without an apparentunderstanding of the subject matter, it reverses two national judicialdec<strong>is</strong>ions that both ruled that video installations should be classifiedas art. No judge had decided the <strong>is</strong>sue in any other way. There wasno need for the Regulation, which <strong>is</strong> contrary to the jur<strong>is</strong>prudenceof the European Court of Justice”. 106 Because th<strong>is</strong> Regulation only addressesthe specific Viola and Flavin ‘components’ imported into theEU by Haunch of Ven<strong>is</strong>on, it remains moot whether it embraces importationinto the EU of component parts of all d<strong>is</strong>assembled artworks.V. Star WarsLet us finally consider the latest landmark judgment on “<strong>What</strong> <strong>is</strong>art?” Handed down by the UK Supreme Court in July 2011, and popularlyknown as the Star Wars case, it was brought by George Lucasand h<strong>is</strong> companies claiming copyright infringement against a UKdesigner-maker named Andrew Ainsworth. There was a sequence offour judicial dec<strong>is</strong>ions; given by:• Federal US Court in 2006: a default judgment for Lucas 107• UK High Court in 2010: finding for Ainsworth 108• UK Court of Appeal in 2010: finding for Ainsworth 109• UK Supreme Court in 2011: finding for Ainsworth. 110The UK Supreme Court was required to determine the legal meaningof sculpture in UK copyright law. The significance of th<strong>is</strong> dec<strong>is</strong>ion<strong>is</strong> far-reaching: not only because UK’s judicial system <strong>is</strong> based uponthe common law principle of precedent, whereby th<strong>is</strong> dec<strong>is</strong>ion andits rationale should be followed by all UK courts trying the same ora similar legal <strong>is</strong>sue; but also because UK Supreme Court judgmentsare respected by, and potentially influential upon, courts of record incommon law jur<strong>is</strong>dictions around the world. Any such influence willdepend upon, and be directly proportionate to, the nature and quality106. Id..107. Lucasfilm Ltd v. Shepperton Design Studios Ltd., No. CV05-3434 RGKMANX, 2006 WL 6672241 (C.D. Cal. Sept. 26, 2006).108. Lucasfilm Ltd & Ors v Ainsworth & Anor, [2008] EWHC 1878 (Ch), (Eng.and Wales High, Chanc.)109. [2009] EWCA Civ 1328, [2010] Ch 503110. Lucasfilm Ltd and others v. Ainsworth and another, [2011] UKSC 39

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