Banksy allowed to remain anonymous following EU trademark trial
Notorious anonymous British street artist Banksy has come out victorious today in a trademark case that challenged his ability to stay anonymous.
Back in 2002, Banksy spray-painted a mural featuring a row of monkeys outside a Brighton nightclub. The piece was named after the message sported by some of the monkeys’ sandwich boards, which read: “Laugh Now, But One Day We’ll Be In Charge”.
Banksy’s authenticating body since 2008, Pest Control, had filed a trademark for the image in 2018, which was subsequently registered in June of the following year. The image has been reproduced a number of times since, one of which sold for $2.9 million at Sotheby’s during their Modern & Contemporary Art Evening Sale in London in June 2021.
In November 2019, the greeting card company Full Colour Black logged a complaint that formally opposed the trademark, alleging that it was filed in “bad faith” and that the work was not solely owned by Banksy. When the complaint escalated to a full trial, the European Union’s Intellectual Property Office formally ruled that Banksy could not retain his trademark and his anonymity at the same time.
In a ruling over the copyright to one of Banksy’s previous works, ‘Flower Thrower’, it was found that “if Banksy could not be identified as the ‘unquestionable owner’ of his graffiti, as his identity is a secret, it further cannot be established without question that the artist holds any copyrights to a graffiti.’” That ruling was overturned by the European Union board of appeals today.
“This is a significant victory for Banksy, or more accurately Pest Control Office Limited, which enables Banksy to conceal his identity,” Lee Curtis, a trademark specialist at the law firm HGF Limited, told The Art Newspaper. “The fact that [Banksy] may have said on two occasions that ‘copyright is for losers’ should not impact on the validity of his trademark registration.”
