Rockwell Owner Sues for Infringement
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
A company that owns the rights to Norman Rockwell’s Saturday Evening Post cover art is suing the National Review, claiming in papers filed Tuesday in Manhattan Federal Court that a 2004 magazine cover infringes on its copyrights. The 1943 art, “Freedom from Want” — popularly known as Thanksgiving Dinner — was unauthorized when it accompanied a Review story about how widespread investment in stocks is changing America, the papers charge.
The National Review’s cover “is an exact duplication…except that a mound of money has replaced the turkey on the platter, bundles of money are shown on the plates, and stock certificates are scattered on the tablecloth,” a lawyer for Curtis Publishing, William F. Buckley, wrote in a letter to the magazine’s CEO at the time. Messages left with the National Review in New York weren’t immediately returned. The case will hinge on whether the alterations were substantial enough to qualify as permissible fair use under the First Amendment.
