Art or Artifice? Exploring Judicial Approaches to Authorship and Authenticity in Copyright

Attribution of authorship, namely an artist’s right to claim authorship, be acknowledged as the author and object to false attribution, and authentication of their works are crucial to secure artistic legacy. These rights matter for the artist, their public, and the market. However, in the law, which pursues clarity and certainty, such concepts are blurred and contentious. Their often-ambiguous contextualisation exemplifies the complexity of the interaction between art and law challenged by evolving technologies that intensify their detachment and test the notions of authorship and authentication. In this context further complicated by the overlapping of multiple and disarranged normative layers, exclusive copyright arguments appear unsatisfactory, as this study aims to illustrate with reference to Italian law, which features a lack of coordination of copyright with cultural heritage legislation. This leads to diverging legal interpretations that the judiciary attempts to reconcile, rarely with deed, confirming the inadequate and divisive nature of current legislation as well as validating the need for discussion.