A lawsuit claiming an Atlanta artist’s use of a well-known {photograph} of the late US Supreme Court docket Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg violated copyright legislation was thrown out by a federal choose this week.
Artistic Photographers is a industrial images company that represents artists like Ruvén Afanador, who photographed Ginsburg in 2009 for The New York Instances Journal. The company sued Atlanta-based artist Julie Torres in 2021, alleging she used Afandor’s picture of the late choose with out permission to create screenprints and mixed-media works.
Torres’s work that includes the Ginsburg portrait has bought for as a lot as $12,000, in accordance with Artistic Photographers’ criticism, and one screenprint is within the assortment of the Metropolitan Museum of Artwork in New York. Tremendous Diva! (2020) was created after Ginsburg’s dying in September 2020 amid “reflection on her historic legacy and the good loss her dying introduced to the Court docket and the nation”, in accordance with the museum’s web site.
Artistic Photographers claimed to be the unique licensee of Afandor’s pictures, and accused Torres of purposefully uncrediting Alfanador’s {photograph} in her paintings. Torres filed a movement to dismiss the criticism final yr.
US District Decide Jean-Paul Boulee dominated this week that Artistic Photographers doesn’t personal Alfanador’s copyright, and that the deal the company signed with the photographer makes them his unique agent however not essentially the unique licensee for his work. Even when the settlement did embody a clause concerning unique licence, the contract doesn’t embody stipulations that cowl spinoff works like Torres’s prints and mixed-media creations, Boulee wrote.
Whereas Boulee threw out Artistic Photographers’ lawsuit, he mentioned he’ll give the company two weeks to transform the criticism and refile.
Final month, a jury in New York dominated {that a} digital artist violated trademark legislation together with his line of “MetaBirkins” NFTs (non-fungible tokens) in a lawsuit introduced by luxurious model Hermès. The jury dominated that NFTs are usually not protected speech underneath the First Modification and are topic to trademark legislation, which has extra inflexible tips on the usage of logos, model names and and different distinguishing symbols.
