Was thinking of this after a conversation I had on a thread about dreams. Someone joked “I was dreaming of the events of The Matrix, then I was woken up by someone worried my dream was infringing the Wachowski’s copyrights”, and it turned into a whole train of thought in my mind, like violating IP law because you stole fire from Zeus which was his intellectual property.
I think Anish Kapoor owns Vantablack if that counts. Technically he probably just owns the right to the paint
He doesn’t own it. He has an exclusive license to use it in art. Surrey NanoSystems Limited owns the patent on VantaBlack. Stuart Semple was so angry that Kapoor received that license that he had a blacker black material created and licensed it to anyone but Kapoor. When Kapoor obtained a sample anyway, Semple had a still blacker material created, to spite him.
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/shortcuts/2019/aug/05/black-30-anish-kapoor-and-the-art-worlds-pettiest-funniest-dispute
As much as I dislike Kapoor, technically Vantablack isn’t a pigment or regular paint by any means. From my understanding it is actually carbon nano tubes with who knows what else mixed in it and I believe it’s actually very dangerous to be around without proper PPE. So in that sense, it makes sense to me that he “owns” it.
Still don’t like the guy though.