Anonymity hurts Banksy as he loses copyright fight with greeting card company
London: Banksy can no longer claim legal rights to his artwork, experts say after he was stripped of two more trademarks for some of his famous graffiti.
The two latest rulings against the anonymous multi-millionaire street artist mean he has lost rights to four of his works. The European Union Intellectual Property Office judgments warn Banksy’s anonymity means he cannot secure copyright. He is repeatedly trying to claim trademark rights.
Banksy’s Radar Rat appeared on a few walls in the streets of London. They were later reproduced on canvas in 2004 as well as on the cover of Dirty Funker’s ‘Future’ album in 2008.
The judges found he is acting in “bad faith” because he is only pretending to want to trade in his creations, having said intellectual property laws are “for losers” and urging people to “copy, borrow, steal and amend” his work.
Full Colour Black, a British greeting cards company which recreates his works for sale, has persuaded the EU to cancel trademarks he obtained three years ago for Radar Rat and Girl with an Umbrella.
The legal papers say Girl with an Umbrella emerged in 2008 in New Orleans and became “one of the best-known” Banksys. Radar Rat, “arguably the most iconic and famous of his works”, appeared on walls in London.
Nola, also known as Umbrella Girl or Rain Girl, first appeared in 2008, painted by Banksy on the streets of the Marigny neighbourhood in the city of New Orleans, Louisiana, three years after the tragic events of Hurricane Katrina.
The panel said because Banksy “has chosen to be anonymous” his “identity cannot be legally determined” and that “hinders him from being able to protect this art under copyright laws without identifying himself”.
They add how “identifying himself would take away from the secretive persona” which has made him so famous.
While copyright protects an artist’s work from reproduction for their lifetime and 70 years after their death, a trademark secures indefinitely the commercial origins of a product.
The panel accepted Banksy filed the two trademarks in “bad faith” because he had no intention of actually using the images for trade. They said “there is no evidence Banksy was actually producing, selling or providing any goods or services” before he successfully applied for the EU trademark in 2018.
He then opened a shop in Croydon in 2019 that “would not be open to the public” but sold only online, before stating the store was only created to help the “trademark dispute” with the greetings card company.
The panel concludes Banksy and his lawyer – “by their own words” – opened the shop to “circumvent the law” rather than to use their trademarks for commercial purposes.
The Telegraph, London
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