Court Hands Jeff Koons Victory in “Made in Heaven” Lawsuit
161Feb. 28, 2025
US District Judge Timothy Reif on February 26threw out a copyright infringement caseagainst Jeff Koons on the grounds that the plaintiff had waited too long to sue. Set designer Michael Hayden in 2021 hadfiled suitin New York’s Southern District Court, claiming that Koons appropriated a sculpture he’d made—depicting a serpent and a rock slab—in his “Made in Heaven” series. Hayden had created the serpent-and-slab work as a stage prop for politician Ilona Staller in the 1980s; it appeared in the famed artist’s 1989Made in Heavenand in hisJeff and Ilona (Made in Heaven)andJeff in the Position of Adam, both 1990, as a support for the amorous grappling of Staller (formerly known as the porn star Cicciolina) and Koons, who were briefly married in the early 1990s. The series brought Koons, who was then far less well known than Staller, to wide attention.
Hayden had argued that he was unaware that Koons featured the serpent-and-rock sculpture in his own work, and that he only learned of the “Made in Heaven” series in 2019, when it appeared in an Italian news article. He obtained a copyright for the sculpture the following year and notified Koons of his intent to sue. Reif, however, sided with Koons, who had contended that Hayden, owing to his career and to his connection to Italy, should have been aware of the series—which garnered substantial press coverage at the 1990 Venice Biennale, where it was displayed—sooner. “A reasonably diligent person in plaintiff’s position should have discovered the alleged infringement prior to 2019,” wrote the judge in his ruling.
The case had been closely watched, following a 2019 federal ruling that cleared the Warhol Foundation of wrongdoing after photographer Lynn Goldsmith sued over the Pop artist’s appropriation of a photograph she took of Prince. In that instance, the court found that the appropriation fell under fair use because the resulting work sufficiently transformed the original.
Hayden’s attorney, Jordan Fletcher, told Reuters that his client plans to appeal.