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Post Office Owes $3.5 Million For Using Wrong Statue of Liberty On a Stamp (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: A sculptor who created a replica of the Statue of Liberty for a Las Vegas casino was awarded $3.5 million in damages last week after the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) accidentally used a photo of his statue -- rather than a photo of the original statue in New York harbor -- on one of its most common stamps. If you bought a "forever" stamp between 2011 and 2014, there's a good chance that it showed the face of the Statue of Liberty replica that sculptor Robert Davidson constructed for the New York-New York Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas. The Post Office licensed a photo of Davidson's statue from the image service Getty for $1,500, initially believing it was a photograph of the original statue. (The license only covered the rights to Getty's photograph of the statue -- not the statue itself.)
The stamp with the resulting image was released to the public in December 2010; it took four months before anyone pointed out the mistake to the Post Office. In March 2011, a spokesperson said that the USPS "still loves the stamp design and would have selected this photograph anyway." The Post Office continued using the photo for almost three years before retiring it in January 2014. The court reportedly awarded Davidson a five percent royalty for $70 million worth of unused stamps; it also awarded him $5,000 in damages for the nearly $5 billion worth of stamps that were used to pay postage. The total damages amounted to $3.55 million.
The stamp with the resulting image was released to the public in December 2010; it took four months before anyone pointed out the mistake to the Post Office. In March 2011, a spokesperson said that the USPS "still loves the stamp design and would have selected this photograph anyway." The Post Office continued using the photo for almost three years before retiring it in January 2014. The court reportedly awarded Davidson a five percent royalty for $70 million worth of unused stamps; it also awarded him $5,000 in damages for the nearly $5 billion worth of stamps that were used to pay postage. The total damages amounted to $3.55 million.
Getty are a bunch of crooks.
Claiming ownership of pictures that they have zero rights to...
Over selling rights, such as this case...
Extortionist tactics against those they decree to be "violators"...
Getty needs to be scuttled.
P.S. The Post Office needs to appeal this bullshit as well as sue Getty.
someone was paid to make a copy of the statue of liberty
they retained the rights to their work
the USPS used an image of that statue instead of the original and refused to pay up
the artist sued and won a lot of money
lesson - the US government has to follow it's laws
The license only covered the rights to Getty's photograph of the statue -- not the statue itself.
The stamp only contained the photograph of the statue -- not the statue itself.
Getty should be refunding the $1500, because apparently the photographer didn't have the right to sell the rights that getty presumed to have offered the USPS.
Finally... they should negotiate a REASONABLE royalty. 5% Of the postage is not a reasonable royalty, because the stamp was not sold for the picture but a SERVICE ---- the value of the picture on the stamp is decorative; So a few pennies worth of the stamp's price can be attributed to its aesthetic value, and then 5% of that few pennies' worth per stamp is a reasonable royalty: not 5% of the total postage.
This makes no sense, you pay a big agency like Getty's for the rights of an image and you have to hunt down yourself potential right owners of whatever the images show because it's your fault if others come after you? Is everyone in copyright law, including judges, completely bonkers?
Rhetorical question it seems, we do have an answer...
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The payments for this lawsuit come out of the revenue that was generated selling the stamps that were never used (collected).
There is no reasonable way to identify how many of those stamps were never used. They are "forever" stamps -- they could be used tomorrow or in a week or in a year or in ten years. You MIGHT be able to count how many HAVE been used, but you can't just subtract to get how many will not be used. I can't imagine that the USPS actually tries to count which stamps are being used, but perhaps it is part of the postmarking system.
Second, the revenue for those stamps was not paying for an image. The USPS is not profiting from the sale of the image. The revenue is paying for the service of sending the email. This service has nothing to do with the image on the stamp. When I buy stamps, I say "give me a package of stamps", and I don't care what the images are. Do I have some of the SOL forevers still unused? Certainly -- I know I have lost at least one package of stamps, and it very well could be that version. Should the USPS be fined 5% of the money I paid for them? Don't be ridiculous.
Why is the sculptor allowed to make a copy of the statue of liberty, but the USPS is not allowed to make a copy of a picture of that statue?
Sounds like bullshit to me.
Also, how exactly is this stamp replacing the use of that statue?
Seems like an absolutely retarded ruling.