Artist's family asks Google to take down logo

Found on Mercury News on Saturday, 22 April 2006
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The family of Joan Miro was upset to discover elements of several works by the Spanish surrealist incorporated into Google's logo. Google has since taken the logo off its site.

"There are underlying copyrights to the works of Miro, and they are putting it up without having the rights," said Theodore Feder, president of Artists Rights Society.

In a written statement to the Mercury News, Google said that it would honor the request but that it did not believe its logo was a copyright violation.

Feder said the society had raised the issue of copyright violation with Google at least once before when the Mountain View-based company incorporated work by Salvador Dali into its logo in May 2002.

"It's a distortion of the original works and in that respect it violates the moral rights of the artist," Feder said.

You could buy a book with his artwork, or pay a small fee and visit a museum to look at them. They should be happy about the hommage; instead, they whine and cry about copyrights. It might even be possible that this logo is a parody, and that wouldn't infringe any copyrights.