page_title: Napoleon Sarony
section_title: Oscar Wilde
hierarchical_section_title: Napoleon Sarony / Associations / Oscar Wilde
caption_attribution_description: English: Albumen silver print. Metropolitan Museum of Art. Gilman Collection, Purchase, Ann Tenenbaum and Thomas H. Lee Gift, 2005. Accession Number: 2005.100.120. This photograph - n° 18 of the sery - "became the subject of a copyright infringement suit by Sarony against the Burrow-Giles Lithographic Company, which had marketed unauthorized lithograph trade cards containing the image. The federal trial court for the Southern District of New York awarded a $610 judgment to Sarony (the equivalent today of over $13,000). The judgment was affirmed by the U.S. Circuit Court for the Southern District of New York, and subsequently by the Supreme Court of the United States" [1] (cf. Burrow-Giles Lithographic Co. v. Sarony).
context_page_description: Napoleon Sarony was an American lithographer and photographer. He was a highly popular portrait photographer, best known for his portraits of the stars of late-19th-century American theater. His son, Otto Sarony, continued the family business as a theater and film star photographer.
context_section_description: One of Sarony's portraits of writer Oscar Wilde became the subject of a U.S. Supreme Court case, Burrow-Giles Lithographic Co. v. Sarony 111 U.S. 53 (1884), in which the Court upheld the extension of copyright protection to photographs. Sarony sued Burrow-Giles after it used unauthorized lithographs of Oscar Wilde No. 18 in an advertisement, and won a judgment for $610 (the modern equivalent of just over $12,000) that was affirmed on appeal by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals and the Supreme Court. Sarony later photographed the Supreme Court itself, to celebrate the centennial of the federal judiciary in 1890.
caption: Oscar Wilde No. 18 (1882), the subject of Sarony's copyright infringement lawsuit that reached the U.S. Supreme Court
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