Katya Assaf
Katya Assaf-Zakharov studied law at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (LL.B. and LL.M.), and wrote her Ph.D. at the University of Munich (LMU), Germany, working as a scholar of the Max Planck Institute for Intellectual Property. She is now an assistant professor at the Law Faculty of the Hebrew University and a member of the DAAD Center for German Studies. Her research focuses on Intellectual Property, especially on its social, cultural, philosophical and economic aspects. A significant part of her writings critically analyze consumer culture, brand fetishism, and capitalist ideology in different legal contexts. She is also interested in comparative law, particularly in comparing German and US-American legal regulations and tracing the cultural and philosophic roots of the different legal perceptions.Recently, she has started a project on graffiti and the right to the city.
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grants the inventors of new, non-obvious, and useful technologies time-limited market exclusivity over their inventions. The idea behind this
mechanism is to make socially desirable inventive activity privately
profitable. As long as the invention withstands the patentability criteria,
the inventor’s contribution to technological progress is believed to
justify the social costs associated with market exclusivity, such as
premium prices, reduced variety, and deadweight losses. The Patent
and Trademark Office (PTO) examines patent applications and decides
whether the inventions in question fulfill these criteria.
Yet, as several scholars note, today many registered patents
embrace technologies that would likely fail to withstand the legal
patentability requirements. Several factors make the PTO prone to
issuing such “weak” patents. Notwithstanding their doubtful validity,
weak patents exert a significant market influence, allowing their owners
to stop other firms from using similar technologies or to extract fees for
such use. These practices impose significant costs on the public, without justification in terms of contribution to technological progress. Some fields of technology are overcrowded with patents, many of which are weak, creating significant risks and costs for productive firms. This has led Congress, courts, and scholars to seek solutions for reforming
patent law, mainly focusing on improving the accuracy of the PTO
examination and reducing the risks associated with patent infringement.
This Article proposes an alternative way of coping with the
phenomenon of weak patents. It identifies a basic flaw in patent law––
the asymmetry of risk allocation. The system is predisposed in favor of
patent holders and against alleged infringers. The considerable legal
uncertainty associated with patent law affects parties to patent conflicts
differently. When a firm uses a patented technology, or a similar one,
neither the patent owner nor the user knows with certainty whether the
patent is valid and whether the use is infringing. Yet, if a court finds the
patent valid and the use infringing, the user will be liable for the
damages inflicted upon the patent owner. In contrast, if the court finds
the patent invalid or the use non-infringing, the patent owner will
usually bear no liability for the damages inflicted upon the user and the
public. This asymmetry gives much bargaining power to patent owners
and invites opportunism. This Article proposes to reconsider the basic
risk allocation in patent law and to introduce liability for damages
caused by invalid patents.
Western jurisdictions hold different views on imitation: while the United States (U.S.) legal system normally strives to encourage it, the legal systems of continental Europe tend to be much more cautious. This difference has to do with the more general cultural dispute between the Old and the New World on authenticity and imitation. On a subtler level, this dispute is interconnected with the tradition of preserving established social orders – which is typical for continental Europe – and the ideal of social mobility – which characterizes American national ethos. The current legal tendency to protect “non-traditional” trademarks against imitation preserves status privileges, thus clashing with the ideal of social mobility. Hence, in the U.S. context, this protection is non-traditional in an additional sense: it is dissonant with a most fundamental cultural tradition of that country.
Trademark law initially aims at preventing consumer confusion. Yet, today, famous trademarks are extensively protected against nonconfusing associations. 1 argue in this article that this broad protection is based on magical thinking. Pointing out the parallels between the laws of magic and trademark doctrines, such as the doctrine of dilution, I suggest that famous marks are legally treated as magical, sacred objects. This legal approach amounts to endorsing the commercial religion of brands.
Trademarks are symbols designed to enable the consumer to identify without confusion the source of various goods and services. Today, however, trademarks are much more than source identifiers. They are culturally meaningful signs. Thus, for example, the trademark “Coca-Cola,” in addition to conveying information about the origin of soft drinks, is associated with freedom, youth, joy and globalization. The trademark “Chanel” stands not only for fragrances and apparel, but also for exclusivity, intelligence and European chic. The cultural meaning of the Olympic rings and Mickey Mouse, both registered trademarks, can hardly be gasped in a few words. Famous trademarks embed values, visions and ideals we believe in. As cultural signs, they occupy a rather central place in our society.
The cultural meaning of a trademark is carefully built up by its owner by means of advertising and other marketing techniques. These techniques create associative links between the trademark and various positive cultural signs such as freedom, youth, intelligence, etc. This article argues that these links are reciprocal. That is, while the trademark begins to carry some of the meaning of the cultural signs it has been linked to, these cultural signs also absorb some of the commercial flavor of the mark.
Eine Marke ist ein Zeichen, das dafür bestimmt ist, dem Verbraucher die Waren bzw. Dienstleistungen des Markeninhabers erkennen zu lassen und sie von denjenigen anderer Anbieter zu unterscheiden. Der primäre Zweck des Markenrechts ist es, die Marke als Herkunftszeichen zu schützen, was vor allem durch das Verbot einer verwechselbaren Benutzung durch Dritte erreicht wird.
Dennoch sind heute manche bekannte Marken mehr als bloßen Herkunftszeichen – sie sind vielmehr bedeutsame kulturelle Zeichen. So stehen bespielsweise die Marken „McDonald’s“ und „Coca-Cola“ nicht nur für die jeweiligen Produkte, sondern auch für Freiheit, amerikanischen Geist, jugendlichen Lebensstil, Globalisierung usw. Die Marke „Chanel“ wird nicht nur mit Parfüm und Kleidung, sondern auch mit Eleganz und Schick assoziiert. Und die kulturelle Bedeutung des Olympischen Symbols und von Mickey Mouse, beide als Marken eingetragen, lässt sich schwer mit wenigen Worten fassen. Bekannte Marken verkörpern wichtige Werte, Visionen und Ideale. Als kulturelle Zeichen haben sie eine ziemlich zentrale Stellung in unserer Gesellschaft.
Die kulturelle Bedeutung der Marke wird von ihrem Inhaber mithilfe von Werbung und anderen Marketingmethoden sorgfältig aufgebaut. Diese Methoden erschaffen assoziative Bindungen zwischen der Marke und verschiedenen kulturellen Zeichen, wie Freiheit, Jugend, Eleganz usw. Dabei überträgt sich jedoch auch etwas von der kommerziellen Beigeschmack der Marken auf die verwendeten kulturellen Zeichen, was schließlich zu Verwässerung ihrer Bedeutung führt. Dieser Aufsatz beschäftigt sich mit dem fließenden Wandel der Bedeutung von kulturellen Zeichen in kommerzielle Marken und von Marken in andere Kontexte. Er analysiert dabei, welche Rolle das deutsche und das US-amerikanische Rechtssystem zu diesem Prozess einnehmen.
Alices Anmerkung, dass man unmögliche Dinge nicht glauben kann, kommt uns selbst-verständlich vor, klingt sogar etwas tautologisch. In der Tat, wie kann man etwas glau-ben, wenn man weißt, dass es unmöglich ist? Königins Empfehlung scheint auf den ers-ten Blick lächerlich. Denn in unserer Auffassung von was es meint, ein Mensch zu sein, ist die Idee der Rationalität grundlegend. Indessen, wie empirische Forschungen konsis-tent beweisen, hatte die Königin Recht: man kann unmögliche Dinge glauben und kann es zuzeiten sogar schwer finden, sie nicht zu glauben. Psychologische Untersuchungen zeigen immer wieder, dass die Menschen eine starke Neigung zu irrationalem Denken und Verhalten haben.
Das Rechtssystem teilt weitgehend Alices Ansicht und in der Regel, betrachtet den Men-schen als ein rationales Wesen. Da empirische Beweise dieser Auffassung deutlich wi-dersprechen, schlagen Forscher zunehmend vor, Regelungen in verschiedenen Rechtsbe-reichen zu ändern, so dass sie die menschliche Denkweise adäquater widerspiegeln. Die-ser Aufsatz wird sich mit einem spezifischen Typen von irrationaler Denkweise, bekannt als „magisches Denken“, befassen. Ich werde prüfen, wie das deutsche und das US-amerikanische Rechtssysteme diese Denkweise im Kontext der Werbung und Marken behandeln.
Yet, competition over who can consume the most comes at a high price in both environmental and human terms. It also imposes high costs for those who engage in it, both winners and losers. Consumption-based competition emerges as an instance of the prisoner’s dilemma: while society would be better off if consumption races stopped, rational individuals do their best to excel in these races so long as they continue. This Article proposes using trademark law to undermine excessive social competition over consumption and channel interpersonal competition toward socially beneficial goals. Specifically, it proposes encouraging “competitive altruism”—a tournament over good deeds that can yield benefits for its participants as well as society at large. It envisions this tournament as a partial replacement for competition over consumption, particularly the wasteful kind, and posits a system of “ethical consumption signs” to help bring this about.
Research demonstrates that emotional branding results in mistaken quality judgments and hinders rational purchasing decisions by consumers, thereby distorting market competition. Therefore, this Article proposes that trademark law should serve to discourage brand fetishism, and should act to restore the original informative function of trademarks. Yet, as this Article demonstrates, trademark law in practice supports and encourages brand fetishism. This Article surveys the various doctrines in trademark law that, deliberately or not, result in this undesirable outcome, and suggests subsequent changes.
Papers by Katya Assaf
The visual design of urban public spaces (hereinafter “cityscape”) has an important impact on city life – it can channel interpersonal communication into certain directions while excluding others; it can powerfully communicate notions of what is important, what is acceptable, and what the right order of things in society is. While everyone may access urban public spaces, cityscapes are created by a very limited social group, consisting predominantly of property owners, politicians, and commercial enterprises. Real estate developers and municipal authorities decide which entities will occupy the key locations in our city, what information city billboards will communicate to us, and what kind of public art we will encounter on a daily basis. Non-surprisingly, this results in cityscapes highlighting the power of property, the importance of mainstream politics (such as elections), and, perhaps most conspicuously, the dominance of consumption in our lives. Indeed, as urban public spaces increasingly turn into sites of consumption, advertising occupies growing portions of cityscapes, demanding ever-larger portions of our attention. Art adorning urban spaces largely conforms to widespread aesthetic values and accepted social norms.
These hegemonic cityscapes confront tireless resistance. Graffiti – uncommissioned painting and writing on city surfaces – disrupts the integrity of the official visual narratives, relentlessly claiming its own right to the city and offering alternative, unofficial cityscapes.
Protecting official cityscapes, the legal system fights back. Local authorities remove the uncommissioned paintings and restore the official cityscapes. They define graffiti as a serious “epidemic” and declare “wars on graffiti.” Legislators toughen the “war on graffiti” by increasing existing penalties and introducing new ones, extending police search powers, and restricting various graffiti-related activities. The police expends substantial efforts to eliminate graffiti, spotting and arresting the writers. Finally, courts frequently issue remarkably high penalties for graffiti, expressing their dismay with what they see as a meaningless attack on property.
These legal players are joined by property owners, who report graffiti cases to the police, sometimes remove the painting themselves, and sometimes take private measures to prevent graffiti. An additional significant force in this arena is the media that usually picture graffiti writers as “vandals” and “hooligans,” creating and fortifying social hostility toward them.
This “war on graffiti” is commonly framed in terms of protecting property against paint. Yet, as this paper will reveal, the actual war is fought in battleground of narratives. Not all graffiti pieces are treated the same way. Messages that conform to the dominant narratives are usually met with sympathy and not punished. For instance, during the current Covid-19 outbreak, the media praises graffiti messages asking people to wash their hands or thanking the medical staff, while property owners and local authorities frequently chose not to remove such pieces. At the same time, non-conformist messages, such as “corona will kill us” are quickly removed, most severely condemned by the press, and reported to the police.
The same is true for paintings: legal players protecting the official cityscape tend to accept pieces that conform to prevailing aesthetic standards, especially if made by famous artists. Thus, illegal works of a renowned graffiti artists are sometimes safeguarded by protective casting, and even restored by local authorities if “vandalized” by subsequent writers.
In other words, the real war on graffiti a war fought over urban narratives. Property owners and authorities put great efforts into preserving the official cityscapes from disrupting messages, but readily accept illegal paintings that conform to their narratives. This policy reinforces the hegemony of the official urban narratives and suppresses alternative voices. In this paper, we will identify the narratives that enjoy a privileged position in the cityscapes and are constant winners in the battlefield over the narratives dominating our shared visual environment. We will argue that these highly one-sided cityscapes latently obstruct the efforts of making cities more inclusive, democratic, and multi-voiced.
This paper proceeds as follows. Part I describes legal conflicts over the placement of various expressive elements into the cityscapes and their removal therefrom. Analyzing conflicts over expressions that seek their way into the cityscapes, as well as expressions, whose presence in the cityscapes encounters objections, we will identify the narratives that constantly prevail in such conflicts. These permanent winners represent the official narratives conveyed by the cityscapes. Part II focuses on unofficial cityscapes created by graffiti. It demonstrates that the legal treatment of graffiti is greatly dependent on the narratives it conveys, whereas illegal pieces that conform to the official narratives enjoy a highly privileged position. Part III will criticize the current state of affairs, in which official urban narratives occupy a hegemonic position, controlling our cityscapes and, consequently, largely dominating the dynamics of city life itself. It will conclude the discussion with a vision of an alternative legal order, one in which urban narratives emerge in a free and uncontrolled social discourse.
grants the inventors of new, non-obvious, and useful technologies time-limited market exclusivity over their inventions. The idea behind this
mechanism is to make socially desirable inventive activity privately
profitable. As long as the invention withstands the patentability criteria,
the inventor’s contribution to technological progress is believed to
justify the social costs associated with market exclusivity, such as
premium prices, reduced variety, and deadweight losses. The Patent
and Trademark Office (PTO) examines patent applications and decides
whether the inventions in question fulfill these criteria.
Yet, as several scholars note, today many registered patents
embrace technologies that would likely fail to withstand the legal
patentability requirements. Several factors make the PTO prone to
issuing such “weak” patents. Notwithstanding their doubtful validity,
weak patents exert a significant market influence, allowing their owners
to stop other firms from using similar technologies or to extract fees for
such use. These practices impose significant costs on the public, without justification in terms of contribution to technological progress. Some fields of technology are overcrowded with patents, many of which are weak, creating significant risks and costs for productive firms. This has led Congress, courts, and scholars to seek solutions for reforming
patent law, mainly focusing on improving the accuracy of the PTO
examination and reducing the risks associated with patent infringement.
This Article proposes an alternative way of coping with the
phenomenon of weak patents. It identifies a basic flaw in patent law––
the asymmetry of risk allocation. The system is predisposed in favor of
patent holders and against alleged infringers. The considerable legal
uncertainty associated with patent law affects parties to patent conflicts
differently. When a firm uses a patented technology, or a similar one,
neither the patent owner nor the user knows with certainty whether the
patent is valid and whether the use is infringing. Yet, if a court finds the
patent valid and the use infringing, the user will be liable for the
damages inflicted upon the patent owner. In contrast, if the court finds
the patent invalid or the use non-infringing, the patent owner will
usually bear no liability for the damages inflicted upon the user and the
public. This asymmetry gives much bargaining power to patent owners
and invites opportunism. This Article proposes to reconsider the basic
risk allocation in patent law and to introduce liability for damages
caused by invalid patents.
Western jurisdictions hold different views on imitation: while the United States (U.S.) legal system normally strives to encourage it, the legal systems of continental Europe tend to be much more cautious. This difference has to do with the more general cultural dispute between the Old and the New World on authenticity and imitation. On a subtler level, this dispute is interconnected with the tradition of preserving established social orders – which is typical for continental Europe – and the ideal of social mobility – which characterizes American national ethos. The current legal tendency to protect “non-traditional” trademarks against imitation preserves status privileges, thus clashing with the ideal of social mobility. Hence, in the U.S. context, this protection is non-traditional in an additional sense: it is dissonant with a most fundamental cultural tradition of that country.
Trademark law initially aims at preventing consumer confusion. Yet, today, famous trademarks are extensively protected against nonconfusing associations. 1 argue in this article that this broad protection is based on magical thinking. Pointing out the parallels between the laws of magic and trademark doctrines, such as the doctrine of dilution, I suggest that famous marks are legally treated as magical, sacred objects. This legal approach amounts to endorsing the commercial religion of brands.
Trademarks are symbols designed to enable the consumer to identify without confusion the source of various goods and services. Today, however, trademarks are much more than source identifiers. They are culturally meaningful signs. Thus, for example, the trademark “Coca-Cola,” in addition to conveying information about the origin of soft drinks, is associated with freedom, youth, joy and globalization. The trademark “Chanel” stands not only for fragrances and apparel, but also for exclusivity, intelligence and European chic. The cultural meaning of the Olympic rings and Mickey Mouse, both registered trademarks, can hardly be gasped in a few words. Famous trademarks embed values, visions and ideals we believe in. As cultural signs, they occupy a rather central place in our society.
The cultural meaning of a trademark is carefully built up by its owner by means of advertising and other marketing techniques. These techniques create associative links between the trademark and various positive cultural signs such as freedom, youth, intelligence, etc. This article argues that these links are reciprocal. That is, while the trademark begins to carry some of the meaning of the cultural signs it has been linked to, these cultural signs also absorb some of the commercial flavor of the mark.
Eine Marke ist ein Zeichen, das dafür bestimmt ist, dem Verbraucher die Waren bzw. Dienstleistungen des Markeninhabers erkennen zu lassen und sie von denjenigen anderer Anbieter zu unterscheiden. Der primäre Zweck des Markenrechts ist es, die Marke als Herkunftszeichen zu schützen, was vor allem durch das Verbot einer verwechselbaren Benutzung durch Dritte erreicht wird.
Dennoch sind heute manche bekannte Marken mehr als bloßen Herkunftszeichen – sie sind vielmehr bedeutsame kulturelle Zeichen. So stehen bespielsweise die Marken „McDonald’s“ und „Coca-Cola“ nicht nur für die jeweiligen Produkte, sondern auch für Freiheit, amerikanischen Geist, jugendlichen Lebensstil, Globalisierung usw. Die Marke „Chanel“ wird nicht nur mit Parfüm und Kleidung, sondern auch mit Eleganz und Schick assoziiert. Und die kulturelle Bedeutung des Olympischen Symbols und von Mickey Mouse, beide als Marken eingetragen, lässt sich schwer mit wenigen Worten fassen. Bekannte Marken verkörpern wichtige Werte, Visionen und Ideale. Als kulturelle Zeichen haben sie eine ziemlich zentrale Stellung in unserer Gesellschaft.
Die kulturelle Bedeutung der Marke wird von ihrem Inhaber mithilfe von Werbung und anderen Marketingmethoden sorgfältig aufgebaut. Diese Methoden erschaffen assoziative Bindungen zwischen der Marke und verschiedenen kulturellen Zeichen, wie Freiheit, Jugend, Eleganz usw. Dabei überträgt sich jedoch auch etwas von der kommerziellen Beigeschmack der Marken auf die verwendeten kulturellen Zeichen, was schließlich zu Verwässerung ihrer Bedeutung führt. Dieser Aufsatz beschäftigt sich mit dem fließenden Wandel der Bedeutung von kulturellen Zeichen in kommerzielle Marken und von Marken in andere Kontexte. Er analysiert dabei, welche Rolle das deutsche und das US-amerikanische Rechtssystem zu diesem Prozess einnehmen.
Alices Anmerkung, dass man unmögliche Dinge nicht glauben kann, kommt uns selbst-verständlich vor, klingt sogar etwas tautologisch. In der Tat, wie kann man etwas glau-ben, wenn man weißt, dass es unmöglich ist? Königins Empfehlung scheint auf den ers-ten Blick lächerlich. Denn in unserer Auffassung von was es meint, ein Mensch zu sein, ist die Idee der Rationalität grundlegend. Indessen, wie empirische Forschungen konsis-tent beweisen, hatte die Königin Recht: man kann unmögliche Dinge glauben und kann es zuzeiten sogar schwer finden, sie nicht zu glauben. Psychologische Untersuchungen zeigen immer wieder, dass die Menschen eine starke Neigung zu irrationalem Denken und Verhalten haben.
Das Rechtssystem teilt weitgehend Alices Ansicht und in der Regel, betrachtet den Men-schen als ein rationales Wesen. Da empirische Beweise dieser Auffassung deutlich wi-dersprechen, schlagen Forscher zunehmend vor, Regelungen in verschiedenen Rechtsbe-reichen zu ändern, so dass sie die menschliche Denkweise adäquater widerspiegeln. Die-ser Aufsatz wird sich mit einem spezifischen Typen von irrationaler Denkweise, bekannt als „magisches Denken“, befassen. Ich werde prüfen, wie das deutsche und das US-amerikanische Rechtssysteme diese Denkweise im Kontext der Werbung und Marken behandeln.
Yet, competition over who can consume the most comes at a high price in both environmental and human terms. It also imposes high costs for those who engage in it, both winners and losers. Consumption-based competition emerges as an instance of the prisoner’s dilemma: while society would be better off if consumption races stopped, rational individuals do their best to excel in these races so long as they continue. This Article proposes using trademark law to undermine excessive social competition over consumption and channel interpersonal competition toward socially beneficial goals. Specifically, it proposes encouraging “competitive altruism”—a tournament over good deeds that can yield benefits for its participants as well as society at large. It envisions this tournament as a partial replacement for competition over consumption, particularly the wasteful kind, and posits a system of “ethical consumption signs” to help bring this about.
Research demonstrates that emotional branding results in mistaken quality judgments and hinders rational purchasing decisions by consumers, thereby distorting market competition. Therefore, this Article proposes that trademark law should serve to discourage brand fetishism, and should act to restore the original informative function of trademarks. Yet, as this Article demonstrates, trademark law in practice supports and encourages brand fetishism. This Article surveys the various doctrines in trademark law that, deliberately or not, result in this undesirable outcome, and suggests subsequent changes.
The visual design of urban public spaces (hereinafter “cityscape”) has an important impact on city life – it can channel interpersonal communication into certain directions while excluding others; it can powerfully communicate notions of what is important, what is acceptable, and what the right order of things in society is. While everyone may access urban public spaces, cityscapes are created by a very limited social group, consisting predominantly of property owners, politicians, and commercial enterprises. Real estate developers and municipal authorities decide which entities will occupy the key locations in our city, what information city billboards will communicate to us, and what kind of public art we will encounter on a daily basis. Non-surprisingly, this results in cityscapes highlighting the power of property, the importance of mainstream politics (such as elections), and, perhaps most conspicuously, the dominance of consumption in our lives. Indeed, as urban public spaces increasingly turn into sites of consumption, advertising occupies growing portions of cityscapes, demanding ever-larger portions of our attention. Art adorning urban spaces largely conforms to widespread aesthetic values and accepted social norms.
These hegemonic cityscapes confront tireless resistance. Graffiti – uncommissioned painting and writing on city surfaces – disrupts the integrity of the official visual narratives, relentlessly claiming its own right to the city and offering alternative, unofficial cityscapes.
Protecting official cityscapes, the legal system fights back. Local authorities remove the uncommissioned paintings and restore the official cityscapes. They define graffiti as a serious “epidemic” and declare “wars on graffiti.” Legislators toughen the “war on graffiti” by increasing existing penalties and introducing new ones, extending police search powers, and restricting various graffiti-related activities. The police expends substantial efforts to eliminate graffiti, spotting and arresting the writers. Finally, courts frequently issue remarkably high penalties for graffiti, expressing their dismay with what they see as a meaningless attack on property.
These legal players are joined by property owners, who report graffiti cases to the police, sometimes remove the painting themselves, and sometimes take private measures to prevent graffiti. An additional significant force in this arena is the media that usually picture graffiti writers as “vandals” and “hooligans,” creating and fortifying social hostility toward them.
This “war on graffiti” is commonly framed in terms of protecting property against paint. Yet, as this paper will reveal, the actual war is fought in battleground of narratives. Not all graffiti pieces are treated the same way. Messages that conform to the dominant narratives are usually met with sympathy and not punished. For instance, during the current Covid-19 outbreak, the media praises graffiti messages asking people to wash their hands or thanking the medical staff, while property owners and local authorities frequently chose not to remove such pieces. At the same time, non-conformist messages, such as “corona will kill us” are quickly removed, most severely condemned by the press, and reported to the police.
The same is true for paintings: legal players protecting the official cityscape tend to accept pieces that conform to prevailing aesthetic standards, especially if made by famous artists. Thus, illegal works of a renowned graffiti artists are sometimes safeguarded by protective casting, and even restored by local authorities if “vandalized” by subsequent writers.
In other words, the real war on graffiti a war fought over urban narratives. Property owners and authorities put great efforts into preserving the official cityscapes from disrupting messages, but readily accept illegal paintings that conform to their narratives. This policy reinforces the hegemony of the official urban narratives and suppresses alternative voices. In this paper, we will identify the narratives that enjoy a privileged position in the cityscapes and are constant winners in the battlefield over the narratives dominating our shared visual environment. We will argue that these highly one-sided cityscapes latently obstruct the efforts of making cities more inclusive, democratic, and multi-voiced.
This paper proceeds as follows. Part I describes legal conflicts over the placement of various expressive elements into the cityscapes and their removal therefrom. Analyzing conflicts over expressions that seek their way into the cityscapes, as well as expressions, whose presence in the cityscapes encounters objections, we will identify the narratives that constantly prevail in such conflicts. These permanent winners represent the official narratives conveyed by the cityscapes. Part II focuses on unofficial cityscapes created by graffiti. It demonstrates that the legal treatment of graffiti is greatly dependent on the narratives it conveys, whereas illegal pieces that conform to the official narratives enjoy a highly privileged position. Part III will criticize the current state of affairs, in which official urban narratives occupy a hegemonic position, controlling our cityscapes and, consequently, largely dominating the dynamics of city life itself. It will conclude the discussion with a vision of an alternative legal order, one in which urban narratives emerge in a free and uncontrolled social discourse.