{"id":326288,"date":"2025-12-04T02:56:09","date_gmt":"2025-12-04T02:56:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/326288\/"},"modified":"2025-12-04T02:56:09","modified_gmt":"2025-12-04T02:56:09","slug":"the-lawsuit-tearing-apart-two-art-dealing-brothers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/326288\/","title":{"rendered":"The Lawsuit Tearing Apart Two Art-Dealing Brothers"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tIf you have recently heard from or done business with a New York art gallery that has Aicon<\/a> as part of its name, you may want to take a closer look at the dealer\u2019s website or letterhead and make sure you know exactly who you are dealing with. That\u2019s because two businesses, run by two dueling brothers, are in conflict over the use of the name, which, per a lawsuit, denotes a legacy business, Aicon Gallery, which was in operation for 20 years before the brothers parted ways in 2019.<\/p>\n

\n\tAicon Contemporary<\/a>, represented by Projjal Dutta, filed the suit<\/a> in New York Supreme Court in October against defendants Prajit Dutta and director Harry Hutchison, representing Aicon Art<\/a> as well as ArtsIndia.com. The suit alleges false designation of origin, unfair competition, breach of fiduciary duty, and breach of contract, based on the defendants\u2019 \u201cmisleading and unlawful\u201d use of the name Aicon without the word Art attached to it.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\t\tRelated Articles<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Clusters<\/p>\n

\n\tNot only do the brothers share the \u201cAicon\u201d part of the names of their businesses\u2014they also still share an address, at 35 Great Jones Street, and, according to their respective websites, the same phone number.<\/p>\n

\n\tRather than using the name Aicon Art, as the brothers allegedly agreed Prajit and Hutchison would do, they have continued to use Aicon Gallery or simply Aicon to promote their business, \u201cin an attempt, upon information and belief, to monopolize the Aicon name and confuse the art market at the expense of Aicon Contemporary and the legacy business, Aicon Gallery,\u201d according to the suit. The name Aicon Gallery allegedly appears on Aicon Art\u2019s letterhead; a signature block reads \u201con behalf of Aicon Gallery\u201d; the business has advertised its participation in fairs using only \u201cAicon,\u201d rather than Aicon Art; and the gallery\u2019s website bears the name Aicon, without the word \u201cart.\u201d The defendants have even allegedly made promotional pens bearing the \u201cAicon Gallery\u201d misnomer.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tThe website for Aicon Contemporary.<\/p>\n

\n\tAicon Contemporary, the plaintiff, explains on its website<\/a> that it shows cutting-edge art from constituencies that are underrepresented in New York, often artists who are from \u201cdiverse geographies, often distant, immigrant, and \/ or marginalized,\u201d per that description. The gallery has shown established artists such as M. F. Husain, S. H. Raza, and F. N. Souza, along with younger artists including Abdullah Syed, Abir Karmakar, and Salman Toor, and the gallery and its shows have garnered coverage in publications like the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and Artforum. It participates in art fairs including Abu Dhabi Art, Art Mumbai, the Armory Show, the India Art Fair, Expo Chicago, and Zona Maco.<\/p>\n

\n\tAicon Art\u2019s website<\/a>, meanwhile, explains, \u201cAt Aicon we specialize in modern and contemporary non-Western art with a focus on South Asia, the Middle East and Africa.\u201d It is participating in this week\u2019s Art Basel Miami Beach fair, and indicates that it has participated in past fairs including some of the same ones as Aicon Contemporary\u2014namely Abu Dhabi Art, Art Mumbai, the Armory Show, and the India Art Fair\u2014as well as Frieze Masters and TEFAF Maastricht. It represents artists including Rasheed Araeen, Faiz Butt, Victor Ekpuk, Surendran Nair, and Saad Qureshi, per its website, and has exhibited artists including Rina Banerjee, M. F. Husain, Suchitra Mattai, F. N. Souza, and Salman Toor.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cDefendants\u2019 aforesaid conduct has been undertaken knowingly, willfully and in bad faith,\u201d says the suit. \u201cPlaintiff has confronted Defendants about their conduct and demanded that they cease and desist but they have refused.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe plaintiffs are requesting to be awarded damages in an amount to be determined at trial; for Aicon Art to be conjoined from using \u201cAicon\u201d or \u201cAicon Gallery\u201d to denote its business; and for Aicon Art to round up and turn over all its incorrectly labeled products, wrappers, signs, electronic files, and other articles bearing the infringing name.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tAt least, one presumes, they won\u2019t have to carry them very far.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"If you have recently heard from or done business with a New York art gallery that has Aicon…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":326289,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[183216,183217,183218,449,458,459,64,63,460,134],"class_list":{"0":"post-326288","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-aicon","9":"tag-aicon-art","10":"tag-aicon-contemporary","11":"tag-arts","12":"tag-arts-and-design","13":"tag-artsanddesign","14":"tag-au","15":"tag-australia","16":"tag-design","17":"tag-entertainment"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/326288","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=326288"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/326288\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/326289"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=326288"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=326288"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=326288"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}