Icon: enlarge
The popular "Flower Thrower" motif is no longer supposed to be a registered trademark of Banksys
Photo:
Thomas Coex / AFP
In his book "Wall and Piece", published in 2005, Banksy wrote "Copyright is for losers", that is, "Copyright is for losers."
In the meantime, however, he seemed to see things differently - and had some of his motifs registered as trademarks.
Now, however, the street artist has lost the trademark rights to his famous "Flower Thrower" motif, on which a masked man throws a bouquet of flowers.
What happened?
Despite his critical comments about copyrights, Banksy, represented by the Pest Control Office, his agency for authenticating his works, successfully registered the motif as a trademark in the EU in 2014.
The British company Full Color Black then applied for it to be deleted - because it prints and sells images of Banksy's motifs on postcards, among other things.
Icon: enlarge
The flower thrower
Photo: Samantha Zucchi / Insidefoto / Mondadori Portfolio / Getty Images
To defend himself against this, Banksy set up his own shop in the southern London borough of Croydon a year ago.
He was advised to offer a range of his own merchandise because it was the best way to protect his name, Banksy said, according to the BBC.
He also told the broadcaster that he had not fundamentally changed his position on copyright, even if in this particular case he was trying to defend his artistic rights.
Decidedly pronounced against copyright rights
The subsequent legal dispute has now been decided to the detriment of Banksy: They want to repeal the trademark law, confirmed the EU authority responsible for intellectual property on Thursday.
In a statement, this is justified by the fact that Banksy is keeping his identity secret and has also repeatedly spoken out against copyright law in the past.
The artist has not been bothered by the use of his motifs by others for years and even used other people's property in his art without permission, for example when spraying houses or billboards, the EU authority said in a letter.
Banksy's identity is a mystery: The only thing known is that he comes from Bristol in south-west England and came to London in the late 1990s.
He made a name for himself with socially critical and mostly controversial street art motifs, which often come up as a surprise.
His secretly decorated house walls attract worldwide attention, the boards and canvases he worked on are among the most coveted trophies on the market, fetching seven-figure sums at auctions.
Icon: The mirror
evh / dpa