Tomorrow is election day, and I think it’s fair to say most people are ready for this election cycle to be over. However, outside of political platforms and revelations, there are other important nuggets that graphic designers can glean from elections: what is fair use and how it applies to copyright infringement. This election, as well as past elections, has been fraught with copyright violations claims. Let’s review some of the past and present copyright infringements cases

Does creative culture really thrive with copycats? According to the authors of The Knockoff Economy: How Imitation Sparks Innovation, they force innovation and make business cycles run faster. Besides, it’s impossible to stop design knockoffs or counterfeit consumer goods that rip-off brand name products. We’ve seen them all — they infringe on trademark, copyright, patent or intellectual property laws. Last year, there were $1.77 trillion of global trade in the knockoff indus

In 1915 the National Biscuit Company (NBC) filed 13 copyright infringement suits against such firms as Ohio Baking Company, Dake Cracker Company, Hargrave Bisuit Co., and Pacific Coast Biscuit Co. to enjoin these businesses from either infringing upon NBC’s brand names (including their registered “InerSeal”) and/or violating the sanctity of their packaging motifs. In a few cases, injunctions were asked to stop the unauthorized use of similar trade names, NBC’s Uneeda Biscuit

For designers who find imaginative, experimental publications sexy, Printed Matter’s second L.A. Art Book Fair was an orgy of visual delights. An international array of over 250 exhibitors displayed thousands of books — from the handprinted to the mass produced — throughout MOCA’s labyrinthian Geffen Contemporary. The four-day event attracted 25,000 visitors and garnered critical praise. Admission was free. Beyond that, Brodovitch’s Ballet could be yours for $25,000. Mostly,

The pulsar image of Peter Saville’s iconic design for the first Joy Division album has been reproduced a lot in recent years. When Adam Capriola wanted to use the design for a parody t-shirt, he followed an internet trail that went beyond what he could have imagined. In a blog post about his findings, he discovers how the image ended up in the Cambridge Encyclopedia of Astronomy (where drummer Stephen Morris first discovered it), some facts about the pulsar and a few interest

Starbucks is at it again. Last week it filed an intellectual property rights lawsuit against the owner of a Thai street vendor and called for his arrest. This is one year after Damrong Maslae ignored the company’s cease-and-desist letter to stop using their Bangkok coffee stall’s “Starbung Coffee” logo, on the basis of trademark violation. Yes, the basic design template, typography and color scheme are the same as the world-famous insignia. But Maslae points out that his show

Minnie Moo, photographed by Tom Burton, via The Orlando Sentinel Modern Dog Design has been around since 1987, and counts among its clients Swatch, Coca-Cola, The New York Times, and Warner Bros. Records, as well as two other large companies that Robynne Raye and Michael Strassburger, Modern Dog’s cofounders, now find themselves preparing to face down in federal court. The dispute is over sketches of dogs that the Modern Dog team decided to use as the endpapers for a 20-year

Color-fans can now channel their fascination into a worthy cause: OwnaColour.com, sponsored by Glidden Paint, is auctioning off shades of the digital rainbow for charity. For a $2 donation to UNICEF (or more if you wish), you can select and name your very own shade. OwnaColour also provides real-time infographics tracking favorite shades by gender, country and so forth. (Thanks to James Hirschfeld for clueing me in.) I love the idea – cut to me, bee-lining it to buy the world

Maisel's original art for Kind of Blue (left) and the reimagined art for Kind of Bloop (right) Basically all of Twitter is talking about this piece from Andy Baio, who is better known to all y’all as “one the guys who started Kickstarter.” Last year, he put out a cute lil’ one-off album called Kind of Bloop, which is a tribute to Miles Davis’ classic Kind of Blue, dressed in High Nerd drag: all the tracks on Kind of Bloop are rearranged in 8-bit music. If you’re not a nerd, t

Last week’s iPhone scandal came in the form of the U.S. Library of Congress’ decision that jailbreaking your iPhone is legal and doesn’t infringe upon Apple’s copyright. What this means to all of us, the end-users of Apple’s products, is that we can use them as we see fit, outside of the context of the App Store. While this is clearly not what Apple wants to hear—and rightly so, because many of the apps available to your jailbroken iPhone use its resources in ways Apple doesn