Sorry I’ve been away. With a law journal article in the works and exams coming up I expect things will be quiet here for a while.
I wanted to break my silence to let you all know that Shepard Fairey – plaintiff and cross-claim defendant in the highly-public Fairey v. Associated Press (the Obama “Hope” poster case) – has just found new attorneys and a new firm to replace the departing Durie Tangri LLP and Stanford Center for Internet and Society. The details of the events leading to their departure are rather depressing for those of us who wanted a clean fair use case; I’ll leave it to Wired and BoingBoing if you aren’t familiar.
After losing one of the best cyberlaw thinktanks and an excellent boutique law firm to Fairey’s totally inexcusable shenanigans, a lot of us out here (“us” being those hoping that this case comes down on the side of fair use or non-infringement) were worried that he wouldn’t find reputation of the caliber that Durie Tangri and Stanford provided in this all important fair use case. Lucky for us, he found the two professors that wrote the book on modern copyright policy.
Specifically, the books Promises to Keep and Born Digital. Professors Terry Fisher and John Palfrey, along with litigation giant Geoffrey Stewart from the firm Jones Day, have been identified in a court filing last week as the counsel selected to replace the departing attorneys. From Fairey’s perspective he could not have found brighter minds to take on this case. Here’s hoping they can keep this case away from this past month’s distractions and back on to the all-important issues.
Their arrival on the case is pending Judge Hellerstein’s approval of Fairey’s motion. For more, check out Justia.
Update (12 Nov): The New York Times reports that Judge Hellerstein approved the motion.
