[NYCInfoLaw] Contrabrand: Art, Advertising and Property in the Age of Corporate Identity

[Fordham Information Law Society]

Sonia Katyal is giving a lecture on Monday evening at Volunteer Lawyers for
the Arts.

Contrabrand: Art, Advertising and Property in the Age of Corporate Identity*
A lecture by Sonia Katyal**, Associate Professor of Law, Fordham Law School

When: Monday, November 24, 2008: 6-8pm ( reception at 5:30)
Where: VLA, 1 East 53rd Street, NY, NY 10022 (auditorium)
Fees:
Artist/Student: $10 for VLA members, $15 non-members
Legal Professional: $100 for VLA members, $125 non-members

This VLA lecture is open to the public. Attorneys will receive 2.0 CLE
credits. To register, please complete this registration form. This program
is co-sponsored by the New York County Lawyers Association. NYCLA members
receive a 10% discount. All registration fees are non-refundable.

In her talk, based on her forthcoming book from Yale Press, Contrabrand,
Katyal will focus on the intersection of art, advertising, and intellectual
property within the First Amendment, and to show how the law has shifted in
response to accord with the constitutional challenges the branding movement
has created. The greatest threat to cultural and artistic freedom,
Contrabrand points out, stems not from the pervasive power of the
government, but instead from the powerful reach of corporate control over
artistic and consumer response. In her talk, Katyal will focus on a
particular movement in popular art and culture, what she calls
"anti-branding," which she defines to include the expressive activities of
artists and activists who direct their energies towards challenging
corporate branding. Andy Warhol's Campbell soup can is perhaps an older
example of anti-branding; today, other artists like Bettye Saar, Esther
Hernandez, and Hank Willis Thomas use brands to comment on the intersection
of race, gender, and corporate identification.

Katyal will explore how brands occupy our everyday existence, as well as
explain the massive cultural shift that is being played out in countless
courtrooms across America, where ordinary consumers and artists have been
sued by corporations for their anti-branding activities. According to the
Supreme Court, artistic expression is entitled to the highest possible First
Amendment protection, equivalent in power and protection to that of the
purest political speech. Yet the picture suddenly changes when
brands—literally—enter the fray. While the law normally protects the freedom
of individuals to speak and to express themselves, those freedoms generally
stop short when they conflict with the intellectual property rights of
others, particularly where logos and brands are concerned. Rather than
equating these projects as art, or as another form of protected political
speech, judges sometimes adopt a significantly less protective response, and
find evidence of infringement as a result. However, as Katyal will
ultimately reveal, the expansion of intellectual property law has ushered us
into a disturbingly overprotective regime that often risks sacrificing
social commentary for the protection of the brand itself.

**BIO: Professor Katyal teaches in the areas of intellectual property,
property and civil rights at Fordham Law School. Before coming to Fordham,
Professor Katyal was an associate specializing in intellectual property
litigation in the San Francisco office of Covington & Burling. She received
her A.B. from Brown University in 1993, and her J.D. from the University of
Chicago Law School in 1998. After law school, Prof. Katyal clerked for the
Honorable Carlos Moreno (now a California Supreme Court Justice) in the
Central District of California from 1998-99 and the Honorable Dorothy Nelson
in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit from 1999-2000.

Prof. Katyal's scholarly work focuses on intellectual property, civil
rights, and new media. Her current projects study the relationship between
copyright enforcement and privacy (as applied to peer-to-peer technology);
and the impact of artistic expression and parody on corporate identity,
advertising, and brand equity. She also works on issues relating to
intellectual property and indigenous people's rights, with a special focus
on cultural property in the United States and abroad. Katyal is also the
winner of three awards for her scholarly work: her paper, "Exporting
Identity," received a Dukeminier Award in 2002; in 2004, another paper, "The
New Surveillance," won the Yale Cybercrime Award.

Her most recent paper, "Semiotic Disobedience," was awarded an Honorable
Mention in the 2006 Scholarly Papers Competition by the American Association
of Law Schools, and was recently profiled in the New York Times Magazine. In
March of 2008, Katyal was awarded a grant from the Warhol Foundation for her
book, Anti-Branding, which studies the relationship between art, advertising
and intellectual property. Katyal is the first law professor to receive a
grant through The Creative Capital/ Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant, a
program created to support independent, progressive arts publications and
individual arts writers.

Info or questions?  Please e-mail Sergio Muñoz Sarmiento, or via telephone
at: 212.319.2787 x13

Best,
Fordham Information Law Society
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