The foyer of the law firm, Minter Ellison Rudd Watts is dominated by a large text painting with black and white lettering on a red background. It bears the words “$100,000 Credit Held By Billy Apple For Legal Servicers From Minter Ellison”.
The foyer of the law firm, Minter Ellison Rudd Watts is dominated by a large text painting with black and white lettering on a red background. It bears the words “$100,000 Credit Held By Billy Apple For Legal Servicers From Minter Ellison”.
It is one of the artist’s major transaction works where his art, or the idea of art, is used in exchange for services. Negotiated in 2008 the artist has used the credit to employ MERW staff to register his name as a trademark.
Last week a new work was added to the firm’s collection of the artist's work with “$23,610 Top Up Credit Held By Billy Apple For Legal Services from Minter Ellison”
The additional funds are not the amount required by Billy Apple however. The figure has been established by taking the original sum and applying the Golden Mean to it. The Golden Mean or The Divine Proportioni s the ratio established where the sum of the quantities to the larger quantity is equal to the ratio of the larger quantity to the smaller one. This ratio has been central to the artist's work' deriving from classicla ideas about proportion in art.
The work is also 23.61% the size of the original work.
The credit has been mainly used for work that the firm has done in creating the Apple trademark. This work largely stemmed from the artist's work with Hort Research in the development of an “Apple” apple which will soon be on the market. This led to the unregistered trademark Apple™ and then in 2009 to Apple®.
Intellectual property specialists Christopher Young and Rachel Colley of MERW have spent close to three years on the registration process which has been hampered by the fact that there are several other :”Billy” and “Apple” trademarks.
They have managed to create Certificates of Trade Mark Registration related to specific areas of Printed Matter, Clothing, Fresh Fruit and Orchard Services.
Now they are attempting to do the same for the artist in the USA, hence the need for additional funds.
The project has not only allowed the artist to test the notion of what constitutes art and an artist’s signature style but the law firm has been able to make significant advances in intellectual property law
