Last year, Ranaan Katz, a minority co-owner of the NBA’s current championship team, the Miami Heat, filed a lawsuit against a blogger who was critical of Katz’ commercial real estate business.
Two weeks ago, Katz filed a copyright infringement suit against the same blogger for publishing an unflattering picture of him. The photo was apparently taken while Katz was standing courtside at a Miami Heat game. He’s also suing Google for refusing to remove the photo from the Web.
Katz is claiming that he owns the copyright to the picture without any further proof.
Now that he has filed suit over the photo, the picture has become even more newsworthy and can now be readily used by others under the Fair Use clause of the US copyright law.
This is similar to earlier this month when Labatt Breweries threatened to sue the Montreal Gazette for publishing a photo showing an alleged killer holding a bottle of Labatt’s beer. (I would argue the legality of the newspaper taking the photo from someone’s Facebook page but that’s another post).
As soon as the beer company demanded the picture be taken down from the paper’s web site, the photo became newsworthy and every other paper and TV station in the country ran the picture and story.
Companies, their lawyers and their marketing people should know better:
• Photographers or their employers generally own the copyright to their pictures.
• Permission is not required to publish newsworthy pictures.
• If you want to influence public opinion, use public relations, not lawyers.
Of course, effective public relations requires first-rate photography.
Added November 27, 2013: Over a year later, Labatt admits it was a bit of a mistake to threaten to sue the newspaper.
