Intellectual Property Law

IP litigator says she was startled to find that her art forgery article had been plagiarized online

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When intellectual property litigator Leila Amineddoleh read a recent online article about fake and falsely attributed art works, she was startled.

The Tehelka Blog article, “The Rise Of Fakes And False Attributions In The Art World,” was substantially the same as her own “Purchasing Art in a Market Full of Forgeries: Risks and Legal Remedies for Buyers,” writes Amineddoleh in IP Watchdog.

A copy of Amineddoleh’s article, which was published in the International Journal of Cultural Heritage, can be found on Social Science Research Network.

The online article—supposedly written by an intellectual property attorney in India—followed the structure of her own work and used sentences and even entire paragraphs that were almost exactly the same, Amineddoleh says.

She and her law firm fired off a demand letter, which is posted on the Galluzzo & Amineddoleh law firm website.

While Amineddoleh writes that she has not yet received a response, the online article is now attributed to her. A line at the end states: “This article is taken from ‘Purchasing Art in a Market Full of Forgeries: Risks and Legal Remedies for Buyers,’ written by Leila A. Amineddoleh, an art and IP lawyer at Galluzzo & Amineddoleh LLP.”

Emails sent by the ABA Journal Thursday morning to the blog that published the article and the law firm at which Amineddoleh says the other attorney works did not receive an immediate response.

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