Cantwo Says “Can Not!” to Spanish Swimmers

[WSJ_law_blog]

When the Spanish synchronized swimmers were banned from wearing suits embedded with waterproof lights at the Olympic Games in Beijing last month, the team quickly regrouped, ultimately taking to the pool in suits with a huge cartoon character emblazoned across front and back.

But one spectator wasn’t laughing, the German graffiti artist who goes by the name “Cantwo.” When an American friend sent him photos from Beijing the day after the games closed, Cantwo didn’t believe his eyes. “The piece on the suits looked very familiar,” Cantwo told the Law Blog. “Despite some color changes: To my mind the cartoon-style character was clearly taken from an artwork I sprayed on a wall in Muenster in 2001.”

Cantwo says neither the maker of the suits nor the Spanish Olympic Committee had asked him for authorization or had paid any licensing fees. “I have absolutely no idea how this Graffiti made its way to the Olympic stage, but I know: I can’t accept that somebody is copying my work, the work I have to live on.” These days, the work of the 38-year-old graffiti sprayer is more likely to be seen in international exhibitions than on buses or walls, though his paintings evoke the style and subject matter of the street.

Last week, the artist, who just opened an art exhibition in The Hague, Netherlands, engaged Leipzig based attorney Tilo Dinter to take legal action against the Spanish team. “In a first step, we will send a catalogue of questions to Spain in the next days”, Dinter says.

The attorney wants to find out who’s responsible for using the artwork, but he knows that will be tough. “It won’t be easy to identify the one person across the borders who caused the copyright infringement,” he says. “We’ll try to reach an extrajudicial agreement with the Spanish swimmers and the producer of the suits. But we won’t hesitate to take court action if necessary”, Dinter says.

The Spanish Olympic Committee did not respond to a request for comment.

For the graffiti artists, copyright cases are a common problem. “It is very disappointing that copyrights of our work are often not respected”, Cantwo says who received damages from a music label using one of his pieces illegally some years ago. “Strangely enough, but people think that because our work is public and it is sometimes illegally painted, they could use it any way they want.”

Photo: Getty Images