Complaint Alleges LG Smartphone Uses Work of Brazilian Artist Without Consent

LG, without permission, is using the “sublime and beautiful artwork” of the late Brazilian artist Lygia Pape to “flog” a new line of “cheap smartphones,” Pape’s daughter, Paula, alleged Thursday in a complaint (in Pacer) in U.S. District Court in Manhattan. LG’s actions are “an egregious violation of federal law and an affront" to the artist and "her legacy, and to artists everywhere,” it said. Pape repeatedly rejected LG’s requests to use her mother’s original artwork to promote the launch of the K20 V smartphone, said the complaint. But LG went ahead anyway and ran “a derivative image” created from the artwork in its consumer packaging, advertising and promotions for the K20 V, plus on the wallpaper of the actual device, it said. LG did so without the daughter's knowledge, and in “direct defiance” of her “explicit and repeated denials of consent,” it said. LG’s “exploitation” is “particularly troubling” because her mother, who died in 2004, “viewed her work as having a social purpose” in her native Brazil, it said: “She did not even offer her artworks for sale for much of her career, although that ultimately changed when she found galleries willing to advance the goals of her art.” Among other remedies, the complaint seeks a court order requiring LG to turn over the names and addresses “of any and all persons” to whom it distributed, licensed or sold the K20 V and for how much. “As a matter of policy, LG doesn't generally comment on pending litigation,” spokesman John Taylor emailed us Friday.