Published in Landslide® magazine, Volume 13, Number 3, a publication of the ABA Section of Intellectual Property Law (ABA-IPL), ©2020 by the American Bar Association. Reproduced with permission. All rights reserved.
This information or any portion thereof may not be copied or disseminated in any form or by any means or stored in an electronic database or retrieval system without the express written consent of the American Bar Association.
The Visual
Artists
Rights Act
A Legal Tool to Preserve
Modern Protest Art
By Caleb L. Green
Caleb L. Green is an attorney in Dickinson Wright PLLC’s
Las Vegas ofce, where he focuses on his intellectual property
law practice. He can be reached at cgreen@dickinson-wright.com.
Image: AnthonyNuccio/GettyImages
Published in Landslide® magazine, Volume 13, Number 3, a publication of the ABA Section of Intellectual Property Law (ABA-IPL), ©2020 by the American Bar Association. Reproduced with permission. All rights reserved.
This information or any portion thereof may not be copied or disseminated in any form or by any means or stored in an electronic database or retrieval system without the express written consent of the American Bar Association.
The death of George Floyd1 has resulted in an international outcry for social and criminal justice
reform, sparking a wave of protests throughout the United States and various countries. On May
26, 2020, the day after George Floyd’s death, Minnesota locals took to the streets to participate
in protest demonstrations.2 These protests swiftly swept throughout the United States. In fact, by
May 28, 2020, every major U.S. city had experienced some form of protest in response to George
Floyd’s death.3 By June 2020’s end, protestors had performed demonstrations in every state within
the United States.4 This wave of civil disobedience and protests expanded worldwide quickly, as
demonstrators gathered internationally throughout Europe, Oceania, Asia, Africa, and Canada.5
However, protesters were not limited to traditional protest demonstrations, such as marches and rallies.
Namely, protestors have embraced nontraditional means to amplify their voice and manifest their con-
stitutional right to protest through creative anti-racist messages, street murals, and related artworks. For
example, on June 5, 2020, a team of eight artists joined a group of community volunteers to create a street
mural with letters 50 feet in length, spelling “BLACK LIVES MATTER” across two city blocks leading to
the White House.6 Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser commissioned the street mural as a symbolic
afrmation of the Black Lives Matter movement and those “who are demanding that we have a more just
criminal justice system.”7 Since then, artists and protesters in other cities have joined the movement and
created street art and murals throughout the United States, including in Brooklyn, San Francisco, Austin,
Cincinnati, and Charlotte. Protestors and artists are still planning to install more murals on public streets in
various other U.S. cities in an effort to protest the ongoing social injustices in our country.
