LAS VEGAS, NV — A federal judge has ordered the United States Postal Service to pay an artist more than $3.5 million after a photo of the artist’s replication of the Statue of Liberty was used by the agency in its Forever stamp collection.
The artist, Robert Davidson, designed the replica statue that stands in front of the New York-New York Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas in 1996 and is called “Lady Liberty.” For a Forever stamp collection released in 2010, the USPS used a photo of the Las Vegas statue as opposed to a photo of the actual Statue of Liberty.
According to court documents, when the USPS selected the photo for the stamp, it did not realize that it was not a photo of the New York statue.
Terry McCaffrey, a former manager of stamp development at USPS, testified that he would not have selected the photo had he known it was not a photo of the real Statue of Liberty, court documents show. The USPS paid Getty Images $1500 for the photo of the Vegas statue and billions of stamps bearing that image were printed and sold.
At issue was whether the Las Vegas statue was sufficiently original to be given copyright protection, whether the government infringed in using the photo and, if it did, whether the use was OK under fair use guidelines.
Davidson filed a lawsuit in 2013, alleging that the U.S. government and USPS infringed on his exclusive rights and privileges under the United States Copyright Act.
“Although the Postal Service paid for a license from Getty Images for the photograph, Getty had no rights to the underlying subject of the photograph,” Judge Eric G. Bruggink wrote in a ruling June 29.
Davidson obtained a copyright for his work in 2013 and since he did not obtain it within five years of the statue’s creation, he had to prove that his work is original. The court said it was satisfied that Davidson succeeded in making the statue his own creation, particularly the face.
In testimony, Davidson said that when creating the face, he thought that it needed to be a little more appropriate for the hotel in Las Vegas.
“And I just thought that this needed a little more modern, a little more contemporary face, definitely more feminine, just something that I thought was more appropriate for Las Vegas,” Davidson said, according to court documents. He also testified that his mother-in-law was an inspiration for the face and he looked at a photo of her every night while the face was being constructed.
Because the court found that the sculpture is distinct, it ruled that the government’s use was infringement and was not protected by a fair use exemption. The two parties are required to file a status report by July 27 regarding the status of the compensation.
Photo 1: The Statue of Liberty in New York City, Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images News/Getty Images
Photo 2: The Lady Liberty Statue outside New York-New York Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, Photo by Ethan Miller/Getty Images for MGM Resorts International/Getty Images Entertainment
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