It appears that the age of self-quarantine and coronavirus did not stop a lawsuit from naming LeBron James last week in a dispute over copyright.
On March 17, photographer Steve Mitchell filed a lawsuit with the U.S. District Court of the Southern District of New York. Sports Illustrated’s legal analyst Michael McCann points out what Mitchell, a seasoned photographer, is asking for after one of his photos was used on LeBron’s Facebook page and Instagram page.
The defendants are accused of infringing’s Mitchell copyright by reproducing and publicly displaying the photograph without the photographer’s consent. Mitchell demands a jury trial to assess whether Section 501 of the federal Copyright Act was violated. He seeks damages that would reflect profits, income, receipts and other benefits derived by James and his co-defendants or, in the alternative, damages of up to $150,000 per infringement. Judge Ronnie Abrams, a former federal prosecutor and adjunct professor at Columbia Law School, is presiding over the litigation.
Obviously, nobody is physically going to court right now with much of the country on shelter-in-place orders the CDC telling people to avoid groups of more than 10 people and to maintain social distancing protocols of being six-to-eight feet apart.
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