Artprice, the French art information service, released a long and convoluted press release today with a headline–“Artprice: Christie’s Makes Another Vain Attempt to Take Control of Artprice at a Lower Price…”–that implies Christie’s is trying to takeover the firm but content that accuses Christie’s of  . . . , well, we’re not entirely clear what the charge against Christie’s is:

With complete transparency, Artprice, represented by its founder Thierry Ehrmann, hereby wishes to inform its 18,000 shareholders and the markets that Christie’s Manson and Woods Ltd, Christie’s France SAS and Christie’s France SNC have launched a civil claim concerning our use of their sales catalogues and corporate identities (which they consider a “brand”) and what they call acts of “parasitism” in using the announcements and results of their public sales.Continue Reading