And that person was also in the wrong, because he initiated the legal proceedings against 2K, Take-Two’s subsidiary, so he does not receive compensation, but he has to pay…
On Friday, Take-Two was able to successfully convince a jury in the US state of Ohio that it had an implied license to depict James Lebron’s tattoo, as the agreement reached between the publisher and the basketball player (according to which his likeness can be used in NBA 2K games) they had the right. Because of this, tattoo artist Jimmy Hayden thought in vain that his copyright had been violated by Take-Two: the jury claimed the opposite.
Dale Cendali, a lawyer for Take-Two, said the decision was important for the entertainment industry and anyone else who has ever had a tattoo and was concerned about not being able to freely share their body on social media without the tattoo(s) on it. should also be visible. Hayden not only tattooed the body of Lebron James, he also worked on tattoos for Shaquille O’Neal and Kyrie Irving, and first sued Take-Two in 2017 for the same copyright infringement.
Earlier, a federal judge in Illinois awarded a tattoo artist $3,750 in damages when he ruled that the use of tattoos on wrestlers in WWE 2K games did not exhaust the principle of fair use. The WWE games are also linked to Take-Two, and although the amount was not significant (in HUF it is about one and a half million), at the time it may have seemed that other tattoo artists could make a similar claim if the athletes’ tattoos appeared in the games.
Also in 2020, Take-Two won a lawsuit against Solid Oak Sketches. According to the tattoo company, they own the rights to the tattoo designs of LeBron James, Kenyon Martin and Eric Bledsoe and believed that they were recreated in the NBA 2K games without their permission. Even then, the lawsuit was unsuccessful: the judge decided that Take-Two had tacit permission because the license agreement concluded with the NBA also covered the rights to the looks of the basketballs…
Source: VGC, Reuters
