Blue Dog and Intellectual Property (Guest Blog Entry)

Greetings everyone! Jacques Rodrigue here. Wendy is taking a much-deserved break this week from blogging while onvacation.  So, I volunteered tofill in and do a guest blog entry!

Last Wednesday, the Louisiana State University Law School’sIntellectual Property Law Association invited me to give a guest lecture.  I spoke to about 100 law students abouthow we use U.S. Copyright Law to stop people from illegally copying mydad’s artwork. 

Additionally, in conjunction with my lecture, LSU Law Students raffled off a Blue Dog print to help buy art supplies for a project that they did with a local Baton Rouge school through the George Rodrigue Foundation of the Arts.  Thank you to all of the students for their support and helping to keep the arts in education!  (click photos to enlarge)

(pictured, Jacques Rodrigue lecturing at LSU Law School wearing his "Blue Dog Shoes" that were seized for violating George Rodrigue's copyrights.)

So, what am I going to blog about today?  Well, Wendy always does such a great job giving a great “artistic”perspective of what we do.  Now, this seems like the perfect time to recap my lecture and let you know about one of the “legal” sides of our business.  Protecting copyrights is a very important task that we all deal with on a daily basis.

Don’t worry guys, I am not going to drown you all inlegalese, however my dad’s artwork does bring up many unique and interesting legalissues that everyone should enjoy.

First, I made it a point to trace my dad’s entire life in mylecture from growing up in New Iberia, going to art school in Los Angeles, then coming back to Louisiana to visually interpret the history of the Cajuns and finally theorigins of the Blue Dog and where the Blue Dog is today.

(George Rodrigue c. 1970 with a typical landscape from his early years as a professional artist)

I wanted these aspiring intellectual property lawyers tounderstand that all of their future clients (artists, musicians, writers and filmmakers)have an equally important and interesting story.  They all have a “life’s work” that they don’t want others tocopy because artists don’t want anyone else to wrongfully profit from their creations or harm the integrity of what they originally made.

However, oftentimes artists are intimidated by a confusinglegal system and they don’t know what their rights are.  Therefore, it is the attorney that must vigilantly protectthe artist’s rights so that the artist has a “peace of mind” knowing that thefruits of their labor are safe.

In fact, that is why we have all intellectual property law.  It is to provide the right incentivesfor creative people to put their new ideas on paper so that all of society canbenefit from what no one has ever seen and what has never existed before.

So, that is what I do. I protect my dad’s intellectual property rights so he doesn't have to worry about the past.  He is able to fully focus on the futurein order to take the Blue Dog on an artistic journey that has never been donebefore. 

(pictured, "Swamp Dog #4" a series printed on metal new for 2012)

For example, if we would let anyone make t-shirts and fake paintings the market would be flooded with cheap Blue Dog images.  Consequently, clients would no longer see the value in the rare prints and one-of-a-kind paintings bought directly from George Rodrigue.  

As you may know, Wendy has said that we don’t license the Blue Dog image.  There are no BlueDog t-shirts, products, lunch boxes, or cartoons.  Our only true mass produced item are our nearly 15 books thatserve to spread my dad’s artwork to a wider audience in what we think is the“right” way (like our newest revised and updated “The Art of George Rodrigue” new in paperback for 2012).

People from around the world email or call every week for a licensing deal.  Oftentimes, they think that withtheir idea they will be doing us a favor by licensing the Blue Dog for use on their product.  They think the extra publicity of theBlue Dog being associated with their brands will make our artwork morevaluable.

However, our view is quite the contrary.  Though perhaps one day when his artistic legacy is solidified we may entertain other licensing agreements, for now, my dad’s images and artwork areunmistakably his own.   If wejumped at every partnership that came along we would run the risk of cheapeningwhat my dad has spent his entire career creating.  That is why we rarely partner with other entities unless theproject really feels right (like with Xerox and Absolut Vodka). 

(pictured, "Absolut Rodrigue" by George Rodrigue)

But, what can we really protect?

Unfortunately, we don’t have exclusive ownership to the ideaof a Blue Dog*.  Copyrights onlygive authors protection to their ideas once they have been “fixed in a tangiblemedium of expression.”

Basically, anyone can paint their own blue dog and we can only stop people from making a "Blue Dog" that looks “substantially similar” to George Rodrigue's Blue Dog.  In other words, would the averageperson think that another person’s blue (or green or yellow) dog looks like itis a copy of ours?  To do that, youwould look at the specific outline of the shape of the dog, the eyes, the nose,the mouth, the interior of the ears, the color etc.

In practice, this is actually a pretty easy test forus.  We know almost immediately ifsomething is an illegal copy or not. So, when we see an illegal copy out there, we seize it, destroy it, andif it was sold, we collect whatever profits that were made. 

(pictured, an illegal Blue Dog papier mache copy seized from a store in the French Quarter, New Orleans.)

Also, important to note is that we actually find out aboutmost copyright infringement from our clients and fans.  They are an army of eyes scanning themarket that want to either protect their own investments in our work or are just big supporters of artists' rights.  We can’t thank all them enough for beingour eyes and ears out there!

That finally brings us to the fun part that people areinterested in seeing.  We then looked ata few examples of infringement over the years.

(pictured, seized "Blue Dog" cell phone cases that were made in China.)

One issue that we deal with constantly are pages cutout of our books** and framed to look like prints that we sell in the gallery.  For now, this is our most importantissue that we stop anytime that we see in flea markets and on eBay. 

We are on pretty solid legal ground to seize these items as "derivative works" because of the very similar facts in the case Mirage Editions, Inc. v. Albuquerque A.R.T. Co.***

These pieces are essentially worthless, yet people pay $30to over $100 for them because they think they are real hand-signed printsthat look big when matted and/or framed. In actuality, they are just printed pictures of signed paintings that have novalue.  We have taken downliterally hundreds of eBay listings and seized thousands of these matted pagesover the years. 

(pictured, a typical box of one-hundred matted pages cut from books that we seized. These particular cutouts were listed at $30 each)

Thankfully, when we seek to seize these items, whoever madethem hands them over without a fight and eBay is also great to take down illegal listings almost immediately. 

Next, I touched on the high profile case of when miniaturecows were illegally made depicting the Blue Dog image.  Originally, my dad made a life-size cow for the Chicago Cowparade and some of their organizers sold miniature cows across the country in Hallmarkstores without permission.  My dad eventually seized the illegal cows and used them in a display at the New Orleans Museum of Art (full story here).

Also, there are plenty of outright fake paintings that wefind around the country.  Rarely, aperson is actually painting their own Blue Dog copies and trying to make a profit themselves.  More commonly, someone unknowingly buysone of these paintings at a thrift store or estate sale and tries to resell them (two of many examples below). 

Plus, I can’t tell you how many times I've heard from anunsuspecting heir, 

Unfortunately, most times, I have to tell them that Grandma had an illegal painting (like the fake "Blue Suede Shoes" below) and what you have has no value.  In addition, you can’t sell it and I need to take it from you because we can't allow fakes to exist in the marketplace.  

Finally, the last thing I touched on in my lecture was some very scary infringement.  A few years ago, wefound a Chinese website that claimed they could paint any Blue Dog paintingever made for about $100.  After doing some research, we learned that there are in fact a fewvillages in China that are full of artists who can copy any painting to sellacross the world.

This is scary because oftentimes the Chinese government doesnot usually recognize foreign intellectual property rights.  Luckily, in this case, the website was hosted by an internetservice provider owned by Google and we were able to get Google to shut thesite down.  However, it is prettyscary to not have any idea how many fakes are circulating in China.  

(pictured, a fake Blue Dog painting painted in China that we ordered to see how good of a copy they could make.  As you can see, the copy is pretty good.)

All in all, I think the lecture went very well.  The students seemed really engaged bythe things I had to say and show them. Plus, this lecture got me to organize my thoughts for what I had to dothe next day.

 

On Thursday, I served as resident “expert” for the HistoryChannel’s reality show “Cajun Pawn Stars” filmed in Alexandria, Louisiana.  I can’treveal too much about the show that airs this summer, but I had to evaluate aBlue Dog print that someone was trying to sell in the shop. 

In my appearance I got to say something that most of theseexperts on similar reality shows both can’t say and don’t have the authority to saywhen they evaluate a piece’s authenticity.  The producers there really liked having this extra wrinklein the story.   

(pictured, Jacques Rodrigue with Jimmie “Big Daddy” DeRamus from the Silver Dollar Pawn and Jewelry Center and "Cajun Pawn Stars")

Just another day in the life of a copyright enforcer . . .

Thanks for letting me be your guest blogger this week!  I hope now everyone has a new appreciation for the importance of copyright enforcement.  Because ultimately, if we did not diligently enforce our rights we would be at risk of losing the protections granted to us by Copyright Law.  

Wendy will be back soon!  She did blog from Jackson, Wyoming this week for the New Orleans paper Gambit Weekly, in a funny account, linked here-

Jacques