It's not a matter of similarity, or independent creation - The painter Sarah Morris directly copied the original artist's work, removed the lines and colored in the voids.
Since there's no question that copying took place, the case will hinge on whether the copying was "fair use" - that's where the issue of whether the copying was "transformative" comes in.
It's especially interesting given that Lang has exhibited his crease patterns - though not as standalone images, judging from what he shows; he's very aware that it's a precursor to a model.
Morris is copying his crease patterns and treating them as an end in themselves; the way she turns them into abstract color fields is very different from what Lang has done with them. Although on the other hand I will quite happily bag on people like Shepard Fairey (the Obey Giant dude) for tracing images without attribution.
I dunno, I've got some of Lang's books in my library, he is amazing and I totally respect him as an artist, but I think that Morris is doing something interesting here too. Citing her sources would help a lot though.
It looks like Lang's crease patterns are the output of his TreeMaker software. While they're derived from Lang's stick figure constructions in the software, Morris probably could have created very similar patterns using the same software without the infringement.
It's not a matter of similarity, or independent creation - The painter Sarah Morris directly copied the original artist's work, removed the lines and colored in the voids.
Since there's no question that copying took place, the case will hinge on whether the copying was "fair use" - that's where the issue of whether the copying was "transformative" comes in.