In the specialized field of sports art, Daniel Moore is well known for his paintings of the University of Alabama football team in action. But he soon may become similarly recognizable in legal circles as his fight against the university’s charge of copyright infringement heads to the Alabama Appeals Court.  The lawsuit, which Moore has been contesting since 2005, seeks to prevent him from selling posters made from his paintings without first obtaining a license from the university. In November 2009, a United States District Court in Birmingham ruled largely in his favor and against the university. The outcome of Thursday’s Appeals Court hearing could set a precedent in the world of sports art.  Moore paints scenes and sells poster and inkjet print versions of them that range in price from $35 to $3,000, depending on whether the image is printed on paper or canvas, and is signed and/or numbered. His 1992 work “The Tradition Continues,” which commemorated a national championship season, sold 19,920 prints and posters.  For Moore, the issue, he said, is one of “free speech, my right to paint what I want and sell my work.” But the university has accused him of trading on its name and the accomplishment of its football teams without permission, infringing on university trademarks by depicting its recognizable uniform, logo and other insignia.  Trademarks are words, logos or images that specifically symbolize or refer to a company’s products and services. Infringement occurs when they are used without authorization. According to Moore, University of Alabama officials stipulated during a meeting in 2002 that he pay an 8 percent royalty for both new work and everything university-related he had done since 1979.  The case is of great interest to “artists all over the country whose free speech rights should not be subject to licensing arrangements by colleges and universities,” said Mark P. McKenna, a law professor at Notre Dame who was part of a group of professors that wrote a friend-of-the-court brief to the Appeals Court on Moore’s behalf.  No less interested in the outcome is the Atlanta-based Collegiate Licensing Company, which wrote a friend-of-the-court brief on the university’s behalf. A spokeswoman for the company said the overall retail market for collegiate licensed products is valued at $4.3 billion a year, less than 1 percent of which is in the “art category.”  The District Court Judge Robert Propst wrote in his 2009 ruling that there was no reason for buyers of Moore’s prints to assume that the products were licensed and endorsed by the university. Rather, he wrote, “it is likely that people who buy the Moore paintings do so, at least partially, because of their loyalty to the University of Alabama and its football team.”  The judge, however, did prohibit Moore from selling his images on products of a more commercial nature, like coffee mugs and calendars, without obtaining a license from the university, and his ruling was vague on the number of prints in an edition that the artist could create.  Steve Heninger, Moore’s lawyer, said Moore was appealing that aspect of Propst’s decision.  “All of our art is copyrighted, and copyright gives us the right to do derivative works on coffee mugs, calendars” and other items, he said.  The university, too, is appealing. Deborah Lane, Alabama’s assistant vice president for university relations, said it was seeking to protect “the value and reputation of our trademarks, name, colors, indicia and logos, by determining who uses them, as well as when and how they are used.”  She said that the university has about 600 licensing agreements under which businesses that “profit from the university’s name and reputation pay a few cents in licensing fees out of each dollar they receive from the sale of merchandise bearing university trademarks.” She said the fees finance academic scholarships.
Daniel Moore has depicted Alabama football in paintings for years, but the university wants him to sign a licensing agreement. An appeal of the case will be heard Thursday.