Christie's Attempting to Take Over Artprice?

In the past on the AW Blog I have detailed how Christie's was expanding beyond international auctions and into insurance, art galleries, luxury brands and art storage.  Is Christie's now attempting to take over Artprice, the French company which supplies comprehensive databases of auction records and artist biographies.  Many appraisers are familiar with and use Artprice.  Today Artprice issued a press release stating in the heading that "Christie's makes another vain attempt to take control of Artprice at a lower price".

The press release details a lawsuit over catalog information between Christie's and Artprice. It continues, stating that Christies claims Artprice is guilty of "parasitism", in providing catalog and auction information for sale.The onlyl problem is the press release is rather long and rambling and perhaps lost in translation does not detail Christie's attempt to take over Artprice, only about the differences the two firms have over releasing, and re-selling auction information. There are some rather unkind statements in the press relase, in what Artprice states Christie's has said, and in Artprices responses, as you will easily gather from the tone.

Artprice states

With complete transparency, Artprice, represented by its founder Thierry Ehrmann, hereby wishes to inform its 18,000 shareholders and the markets that Christie's Manson and Woods Ltd, Christie's France SAS and Christie's France SNC have launched a civil claim concerning our use of their sales catalogues and corporate identities (which they consider a "brand") and what they call acts of "parasitism" in using the announcements and results of their public sales.

Despite the complete absence of any serious claim from the point of view of intellectual property rights, Christie's has decided - 48 hours before the closure of the trial court's (first instance) pre-hearing preliminary proceedings (February 2010) and nearly two years after the beginning of the case which has not been subject to a court-ordered appraisal - to raise its claim from 2 million euros to 63 millions euros without any shadow of a new or serious increase in motive.

It should be said pointed out that Christie's has a previous history of this type of action. In its new demand, Christie's has taken care not to reveal to the court that already in 2001 it launched a similar claim against Artprice concerning its catalogues (Christie's/ SG Archibald vs Artprice /Cabinet Alain Jakubowicz) which ended with Christie's dropping the claim without any concession from Artprice, whose readiness to defend its copyrights in France and the world has already been amply demonstrated.

At the time, Artprice's principal financial partner was the group headed by Bernard Arnault via Europatweb and Agafin. History is repeating, not by coincidence, just a couple of weeks ahead of the adoption of EU Services Directive 2006/123/CE including the notion of "online auction operators" which France had until 28 December 2009 to apply.

Artprice therefore wishes to communicate a) the details of the completely unfounded claims against it, and b) to inform the public that as a listed company traded on a regulated market without interruption since 2000, Artprice considers this manœuvre a violation of France's Monetary & Financial Code. By contrast, Christie's an opaque and unlisted company, has all the freedom to act without the constraints of a supervisory authority. This information should therefore be considered as a supplement to the chapter "current litigation" (which already mentions this case) published by Artprice each year in its annual report and its regulated half-yearly report.

With respect to point (b) above, Artprice is justified in making a counter-claim for damages equal (at the very least) to the unfounded claim launched by Christie's. Artprice's defence is being organised by one of the best literary and artistic property rights specialists in France, Emmanuel Pierrat.

To read the full Artprice press release, click HERE.