Rogers Vs Koons. https://www.pinterest.com/pin/727401777284751933/
1A) The company I work for is huge on sourcing images. I spent my whole first week learning how to give credit to things I use that do not belong to me. At this company I work as a content creator, so most of the time I create illustrations instead of using photos. I was lucky enough to have a sit down with the people at the company who walked me through the entire process of how to manage sourcing images. When it comes to the company using photos, they usually hire a photographer to come in and take photos of their product. The first thing they do is make a contract between them and the photographer that usually includes an all rights agreement.
They explained a little bit about why they wanted to have all rights agreement, but after reading the AIGA article I got a better understanding of why design companies do this. In the AIGA article it stated: “Rather, the client wants to prevent competitors from using the photography (and, of course, the design) (William Fisher, 2012).” This makes sense as companies do not want to look like their competitors or have their customers mistake them for another brand. Also, the best type of photography is original photography. Original photos that show off your actual work is the best way to demonstrate to your customers exactly what you do and how you do it. Plus using the original photography and designs make you unique and helps make you stand out from your competitors.
I have also learned that sometimes as a designer you may be required to function as the mediator between the company and photographer You must be cautions of making sure that contractual agreement with the artist is lined up with the contract you have with your client. Because of this, most designers resist clients who want all rights or work for hire because it makes the client seem like the creator of the work. When reading the Rogers vs Koons case, I learned how important it is to give credit to the respective artist. Jeff Koons is known for appropriating art and usually gives credit to the original owner but this time around he did not. In the 99 Designs article it stated: “Renowned artist Jeff Koons in the process of creating an exhibit on the banality of everyday items, ran across Roger’s photograph and used it to create a set of statues based on the image (Kaitlyn Ellison , 2013)”. According to the article Koons sold several of these statutes and Rogers eventually finds out about this and sues Koons for copyright.
Koons claimed fair use of parody which means Koons was saying he either use the work in a humorous form of social commentary or literary criticism in which one work imitates another. Koons used Roger’s artwork as if it were his own and mention nothings about Rogers, considering this Koons was in the wrong. The courts said the photos and statutes were too similar and that Koons could have made this piece of artwork in his own way without copying Rogers. The court ordered Koons to pay a monetary settlement to Rodgers.
Sources:
Sources: https://bbhosted.cuny.edu/bbcswebdav/pid-64006887-dt-content-rid-494789194_1/xid-494789194_1
5 Famous copyright infringement cases (and what you learn) 99designs, https://99designs.com/blog/tips/5-famous-copyright-infringement-cases/amp/ , April 19 2013
1B) For this internship I was not required to sign a non-disclosure agreement, but I have signed one for another internship. At this company we discussed the company’s secrets, methods, work-in-progress, and things that would hurt the company if the competitors knew. It is important that a company makes sure they make their workers sign an NDA or it could be the downfall of there company. Even when people sign an NDA, they are not always compliant with the rules. In the “Litigators at Work” article, I read: “A dental technology company has obtained a 6.8 million judgement against a former employee accused of stealing the company’s designs (Martin W Aron & Abraham N. Saiger , November 5, 2017)”. This case was interesting because this was a former employee who work at this dental technology company for years but decided to leave the company and start his own.
After two years, the company noticed another company who seemed to be following their business strategy and seemed to have duplicated the systems they were using. Once they found out the owner of the company was the former employee, they immediately filed a lawsuit for misappropriation of trade secrets and breach of the NDA agreement. At first the employee tried to fight the case but realized that he completely copied the company and did not participate in the rest of the trail, which resulted in him having to pay 6.66 million in damages for research and development that the employee originally saved by stealing information from the other company as well as $150,000 in penalties for international copyright infringement. This did not make much sense to me because there is no way the employee believed he could get away with this. It is the company’s interest to know who their competition is, and which companies are doing the same as them.
So of course, when you copy them, they will find out quickly. I read another article in which an employee breached the NDA of a former company. In the article it stated: “He signed an NDA, under which he agreed to hold all confidential information in strict secrecy and not to disclose or use the information without written authorization(Joanne Deschenaux, 2022)”. Even though this employee signed an NDA he ended up using the company secrets for his own use, once they found out they filed a lawsuit against him.
This case was a little different because the employer failed to show that the company would have received profit if the former employee did not breach the NDA. Due to lack of evidence the employee did not face any consequences. If there is one thing, I learned from this case it was to always be prepared. This former employee was in the wrong but got off because the company did not have evidence of them losing profit due to the actions of that former employee, which was their whole argument.
Sources:
6.8 million Award for Theft of Company Trade Secrets ,Litigators https://www.litigatorsatwork.com/2017/11/6-8-million-award-for-theft-of-company-trade-secrets/ , November 5 2017
Company Entitled to Nominal Damages for Former Employee’s NDA Breach ,Shrm, https://www.shrm.org/resourcesandtools/legal-and-compliance/state-and-local-updates/pages/calif-nominal-damages-for-former-employee-nda-breach.aspx, January 6, 2022
