Jeff Koons Drops Silly Lawsuit Over Balloon Dog Bookends... But Not Before Helping To Sell A Bunch
from the nice-work dept
Last month, we wrote about the ridiculous situation in which appropriation artist Jeff Koons, who famously "appropriates" works from elsewhere to make his art, had threatened to sue a store in San Francisco, called Park Life, for selling balloon dog bookends. Despite the fact that balloon dogs have been around for ages, well before Koons turned the concept into a statue, he seemed to think that the bookends were infringing on his work. You can see the two below (bookends on the left, Koons' work on the right):![](https://i.imgur.com/IGFJn.jpg)
![](https://i.imgur.com/fIlhy.jpg)
Oh yeah. On top of all that, reports say that the legal threat has massively increased demand for the bookends. So while Koons doesn't want his name associated with them, it is due solely to his own actions... and those actions have also served to sell a lot of the bookends that Koons so dislikes. Before this, apparently, they weren't selling that well. Park Life says they'd sold three. But since the legal threats, they've sold somewhere around 150.
![Hide This Hide this](https://ii.techdirt.com/s/t/i/topclose.png)
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Filed Under: balloon dogs, bookends, jeff koons
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
Delicious irony!
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Delicious irony!
It is sometimes unfortunate that all real cultural advances are generational, if for no other reason than the present/previous generation simply cannot come to terms with the reality of that which has come into being.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]