Breaking Down The Way NBA 2K Producer Defended Its Rim Against Tattoo Copyright Claims

The case involved a copyright action brought on by Solid Oak Sketches Inc. to NBA 2K21 MT enforce exclusive rights acquired from musicians that failed tattoo work for LeBron James, Kenyon Martin and Eric Bledsoe.

To best understand the importance of Judge Swain's conclusion, it is necessary to unpack each finding, beginning with the level of copying.

To maintain a copyright act, the plaintiff must include in their asserts enough proof to show that the defendant copied their work and the copy is substantially similar to the original creation. To get a copy to qualify as much under the Copyright Act, the similarities between the functions have to be greater than de minimis (i.e. minuscule). Judge Swain found that the degree of replicating in this case dropped under the brink of substantial copying. In reaching this decision, Judge Swain utilized the ordinary observer test, which requires the court to consider whether a lay person would understand that the reproduction substantially copied and forced use of the plaintiff's copyright protected function.

The court held that no reasonable lay person could conclude that the tattoos featured in the match are substantially-similar to people featured on the bodies of the actual players. In supporting that holding, Judge Swain found that the images of these tattoos were distorted to some degree and were too small in scale to matter (a mere 4.4% to 10.96% of the size of the real things). Not just that, but just three from 400 players featured in the game had tattoos that were at controversy. For the court, that amount of replicating qualified as de minimis as opposed to substantial.

The court's finding that the use was de minimis would have been enough to dismiss the plaintiff's claims against the video game producer. Yet, the court found that the manufacturer had a non-exclusive implied license to reproduce the tattoos in its own NBA 2K video games. An implied license is one where there exists an implication that somebody has the ability to reproduce a copyrighted work. It's generally known that those that are tattooed love an estimated authorization from Cheap NBA 2K21 MT Coins tattooists allowing the tattoos to be revealed in public and in photographs or movies that feature the individual who's tattooed. The reproductions at issue in this case, however, weren't real images of those athletes. Rather, the tattoos were found on virtual avatars created by artists that made realistic, but electronic, representations of their athletes and their own tattoos.