As reported by Billboard, a recent court ruling has ordered Hip-Hop artist Cam'ron to pay over $50,000 to photographer Djamilla Cochran for using her copyrighted photo on a range of merchandise without her permission. The image in question captured Cam'ron wearing a pink coat and hat while holding a matching flip phone at a New York fashion show in 2003. Cochran sued the artist and his company, Dipset Couture, for copyright infringement in 2019.
As per the ruling, Cam'ron is required to pay $40,530 in statutory damages, which is significantly higher than the $5,790 licensing fee that Getty Images would have charged to use the image for commercial products with permission.
Additionally, he has to repay the $10,691 Cochran spent on the lawsuit. The court found Cam'ron guilty of copyright infringement as he never responded to the lawsuit or presented any defenses.
“The court finds that a statutory damages award of seven times the licensing fee is sufficient to compensate plaintiff for the infringement of her copyright and to deter future infringements by punishing the defendants,” the judge said.
The lawsuit came after Cochran discovered that Cam'ron had featured the image on a range of merchandise, including t-shirts, jewelry, shower curtains, swimsuits, socks, and even a birthday cake. Cochran's complaint included numerous screenshots of Dipset Couture's product listings and Cam'ron's posts promoting them, and stated that he had been notified several times that he was using the copyrighted image without permission.
“Getty Images notified defendants of their infringing activities by mail and email on multiple occasions,” Cochran’s lawyers wrote.
“Despite those notifications, defendants continued to sell merchandise and continued to display the photograph on website and accounts.”
While many may think that celebrities have the right to use their own image for free, the copyrights to a photograph are almost always retained by the photographer. Though highly debatable, the image's subject being a celebrity does not grant the celebrity the right to use the photo for commercial purposes without permission. This is not an uncommon predicament for famous individuals. In recent years, several celebrities, including Miley Cyrus, Dua Lipa, Justin Bieber, Ariana Grande, Emily Ratajkowski, LeBron James, and Katy Perry, have faced copyright infringement lawsuits after using photos of themselves clicked by someone else.