"Field of Light," by Bruce Munro in Paso Robles, California. (Courtesy Photo)

Carl Schwenker of The Law Offices of Carl F. Schwenker in Austin, Texas, along with Joel Rothman and colleague Craig Wirth of SRipLaw, filed a lawsuit against one of the world's best tropical botanic gardens for allegedly violating the copyright of an artist known for producing large immersive site-specific installations.

The famed Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden is accused of displaying unauthorized knockoffs of lighting artist Bruce Munro's copyrighted works in a large-scale exhibit that ended this month at the 83-acre Coral Gables attraction.

A copyright infringement lawsuit was filed against Fairchild, its chief operating officer, two Los Angeles companies that created the display and a Chinese lighting retailer. The complaint was filed Jan. 8 in the Southern District of Florida and assigned to U.S. District Judge Ursula Ungaro in Miami.

The Chinese company, Zhongshan G-Lights Lighting Co. Ltd., is accused of lifting images from Munro's website, stripping off identifying material and offering the LED light displays for sale through Alibaba and on its G-Lights website.

The British artist has received international awards and recognition. His 60,000-orb "Field of Light" in Paso Robles, California, was recognized this week by the New York Times as one of its "52 Places to Go in 2020."

"We have a very broad view of art," said attorney Joel Rothman of SRipLaw in Boca Raton, who filed the complaint.

Fairchild COO Nannette Zapata was familiar with Munro's work, a board member indicated interest in a Munro exhibition with his studio personnel, and the garden received promotional material about another Munro exhibit, the complaint said.

Munro's team sent a cease and desist letter to the tropical garden Nov. 11, claiming it was displaying unauthorized replicas of his work. Fairchild's Night Gardens exhibit ran from Nov. 15 to Jan. 11 following a 2018 display. The complaint includes photographs of Munro's work and Fairchild displays.

Fairchild, a tropical plant conservation effort founded in 1938, has been the setting for a number of exhibits by another artist, Dale Chihuly, whose glass works were lighted for evening displays.

Rothman said his firm represents clients who produce unusual work that's entitled to copyright protection, such as seismic maps and installations on resin panels. He compared Munro's installations to Christo's large-scale environmental works of art, which included his pink-wrapped Surrounded Islands in Biscayne Bay.

"In one sense, art made with light is different from other types of visual art and sculptural art, painting, illustration," Rothman explained Tuesday. "It's just another way of presenting a creative idea using light instead of paint, instead of hammer and chisel. In that way, it isn't new, but certainly it's not typical."

Other Munro works have been on display at the Atlanta Botanical Gardens, Salisbury Cathedral in England, Houston's Discovery Green Park and Pennsylvania's Longwood Gardens.

Photos of the Fairchild exhibit "show such a striking similarity that it would be impossible to think of the latter as anything but copies," Schwenker said in a statement.

Attorneys for Fairchild and Kilburn Live and Fairchild had no response to requests for comment by deadline. No attorney was listed in court records for the Chinese company.

Read the complaint:

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