Jeff Koons Settles Balloon Gate Lawsuit

Jeff Koons Balloon Dog Photo: © Artlyst

Jeff Koons’s attorneys LLC, have called off their irrational lawsuit with the Park Life Gallery in San Francisco and the Canadian company IMM over the production and sale of multi-coloured resin balloon dogs.

In an attempt to copyright the balloon dog image, as his intellectual property, the plaintiff has relented that the case is untenable. Koons, whose oversized metal balloon dog sculptures sell for millions was suing a gallery and manufacturer for copyright infringement, ordering production and sales to cease. He has now agreed not to pursue any claims against Park Life, the San Francisco Gallery distributing the small bookends or the Toronto manufacturer IMM Living, who produced the decorative ornaments. Everyone is now free to sell and promote the bookends as long as they don’t use Koons’s name to promote the goods. Park Life’s lawyer, Jedediah Wakefield of Fenwick & West will file for a dismissal of his declaratory judgment suit, and IMM Living can now continue production of the goods. With all this free publicity, they look set to be a best seller for next Christmas!

Born in York, Pennsylvania in 1955, Koons studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore and, receiving a BFA from the latter in 1976. Koons is widely known for his iconic sculptures Rabbit and Balloon Dog as well as the monumental floral sculpture Puppy (1992), shown at Rockefeller Center and permanently installed at the Guggenheim Bilbao. Another floral sculpture, Split-Rocker(2000), previously installed at the Papal Palace in Avignon, Château de Versailles, and Fondation Beyeler in Basel, was most recently on view at Rockefeller Center in 2014. Jeff Koons has received numerous awards and honours in recognition of his cultural achievements. Notably, Koons received the Governor’s Awards for the Arts “Distinguished Arts Award” from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts; the “Golden Plate Award” from the Academy of Achievement; President Jacques Chirac promoted Koons to Officier de la Légion d’Honneur; and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton honoured Koons with the State Department’s Medal of the Arts for his outstanding commitment to the Art in Embassies Program and international cultural exchange. In 2017, Koons was made the first Artist-in-Residence at Columbia University’s Mortimer B. Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute and, also, made an Honorary Member of the University of Oxford’s Edgar Wind Society for Outstanding Contribution for Visual Culture. Koons has been a board member of The International Centre for Missing & Exploited Children (ICMEC) since 2002, and co-founded the Koons Family International Law and Policy Institute with ICMEC for the purpose of combating global issues of child abduction and exploitation and to protect the world’s children.

Photo: © Artlyst

 

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