On June 12, 2023, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida ruled in favor of conceptual artist Maurizio Cattelan in a lawsuit brought by visual artist Joe Morford. The court found that Cattelan was the sole author of the work “Comedian” and had not infringed Morford’s copyright in “Banana and Orange.” Although the pro se plaintiff had survived a motion to dismiss, the court found that he had not sufficiently proven either that Cattelan had access to his work or that Cattelan’s work was sufficiently similar to the protectable elements of Morfogen’s work. Moreover, Morford had not sufficiently rebutted Cattelan’s evidence of independent creation.

Meanwhile, Cattelan’s fully functioning gold toilet, stolen from an exhibition at Blenheim Palace, UK in 2019, is still missing, although there has been a breakthrough in the case. There are many interpretations of the meaning behind the work, some art-historical and others political and contemporary.