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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.
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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