There are balloon dog cuff links, earrings, Christmas ornaments, necklaces and key chains, he said. "My client isn't the only one making balloon dog designs," said attorney Rod Byrnes, who represents Imm Living, which began manufacturing the balloon dog bookends last fall. While the oversize Koons sculptures look like supersize reflective Mylar replicas of a balloon dog, the bookends are cast resin with a matte finish, the bottoms of the feet are flat, and the ears and feet are fused, not connected by a twist, as they are in the balloon form and Koons version. The bookends and the Koons sculptures have notable differences, Wakefield said. Now the floor of Alexander's back office is covered by boxes - bookend orders ready to go out. The Bay Area German bar that brought down Apple’s famed iPhone security.This Hawaii hole-in-the-wall sells some of the best treats on the island.Northern California man files lawsuit claiming Safeway deals aren't what they seem.Stanford professor suspected of abuse reappears after going missing on hike.How a forgettable UC Berkeley professor named Ted Kaczynski became the Unabomber.Woman slips, dies at California waterfall trying to save girl."Every clown knows, for the last 40 years, the balloon dog has been always considered art." Mike Ianneo of Burlingame, who has been making balloon sculptures for 35 years, including the balloons used in the 1998 movie "Patch Adams." "Clowns all over America don't understand why Koons believes he was the first artist to turn the balloon dog into art," said Funny Bone, a.k.a. One showed Alexander a 1966 copy of the animal balloon art instructional manual, "One Balloon Zoo" by Jimmy Davis. The legal circus drew guffaws in the art blogosphere and support from local clowns, who showed up at Park Life offering to be expert witnesses in court. "After this all happened, I googled and couldn't find anyone else selling them," Alexander said. stores to sell the bookends, which are manufactured by the Ontario design company Imm Living, which also got a letter from Koons. His sculptures have fetched some of the highest prices at auction for a living artist - $23.6 million for a magenta "Hanging Heart" and $25.7 million for a "Balloon Flower."īut his creations have also led to four copyright violation lawsuits by artists claiming that Koons stole their work.Īlexander believes he was singled out because he was one of the first U.S. Meanwhile, his pieces are exhibited around the world and collected by the Hollywood elite. Koons' work has polarized the art community into adherents who label him pop culture's biggest contemporary artist and more traditionalist academics, who consider his work kitsch. "It's ironic that Jeff Koons LLC has chosen to threaten a small gallery for representing a shape that Koons borrowed from the public domain himself," said Wakefield, whose firm successfully defended the Burlingame Museum of Pez Memorabilia in 2010 against a trademark infringement lawsuit by Pez Candy Inc. He has made a fortune from such works as basketballs suspended in water, porcelain reproductions of Michael Jackson with his chimpanzee Bubbles (on permanent display at SFMOMA) and plastic inflatable bunnies. Koons, like Andy Warhol, Coosje van Bruggen and Marcel Duchamp before him, takes inspiration from everyday objects. His smaller "Balloon Dogs" sell for up to $12,500 on eBay. Koons makes a 10 1/2-inch replica of his oversize sculpture, which he claims is being copied by the bookend maker. (Koons and his attorney Peter Vogl declined to comment, via e-mail to The Chronicle, though lawyers for the gallery have acknowledged that settlement talks are under way.) "As virtually any clown can attest, no one owns the idea of making a balloon dog, and the shape created by twisting a balloon into a dog-like form is part of the public domain," wrote Park Life's attorney, Jedediah Wakefield of Fenwick & West in San Francisco, who took the case pro bono. 20, arguing that Koons' demand was meaningless. Lawyers for Park Life retaliated with a federal complaint on Jan. "But then I thought, 'Who does he think he is? I'm not going to let this guy intimidate me. "When I got the letter, I briefly stopped selling them because I thought we were in trouble," said Jamie Alexander, who opened the Park Life gallery and store of art books, home design objects and jewelry nearly five years ago.
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