The Trump campaign may have violated United State copyright law by selling merchandise featuring the former president’s mugshot, legal experts have warned.
The Trump campaign may have violated United State copyright law by selling merchandise featuring the former president’s mugshot, legal experts have warned.
Federal government works generally aren’t domestically copyrightable. They are considered to be in the public domain within the USA.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_status_of_works_by_the_federal_government_of_the_United_States
ETA: I will add that that USA has some of the best protections for Fair Use. But Fair Use definitely doesn’t extend to selling it at that scale.
These are the tests for Fair Use:
This isn’t federal, though. This is state.
Yes exactly. It isn’t in the public domain, and so is still protected by copyright, and arguably fails the test for Fair Use. But OP’s earlier comment suggested they were not aware that federal works sit in the public domain.
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The law is a federal law though.
It is a federal law that only applies to federal works. This is a state case with a state mugshot that is a state work.
This isn’t accurate as there is no such thing as a federal work or state work nor is there any actual court case. The law covers the whole country and it’s explained in the first sentence of the article:
US Copyright law is a federal law about how copyrights are protected, but the posted regulation is about what federal work is copyrighted and NOT applicable to how state work is copyrighted. It even says it right there in the title: “Copyright_status_of_works_by_the_federal_government_of_the_United_States.” The jail photographer is not an employee of the federal government, nor is the trial an activity of the federal government. This photo was not a work by the federal government.
Woops I didn’t realize you were referring to the upper level comment and not the main post. My apologies!