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Update as of June 2022: Dual Lipa has been sued for a second time, this time by photographer Robert Barbera, for an image he took of her in 2018. “Without permission or authorization from Plaintiff, Defendant volitionally selected, copied, stored and displayed each of Plaintiff’s copyright protected Photographs,” the complaint, written by attorney Craig Sanders, reads. The image has since been deleted from the singer’s Instagram page.
Update as of October 2021: The case of Integral Images vs. Dua Lipa has been dismissed with prejudice.
After posting a paparazzi photo of herself on Instagram without permission, British singer Dua Lipa is getting sued by Integral Images for $150,000 in damages, citing that the singer is in violation of U.S. copyright law. The company is also asking for an order preventing the singer from further acts of infringement, as well as legal costs.
Lipa posted the photo to her Instagram account on February 7, 2019, which was four days after it was taken. She later deleted it.
According to court documents obtained by the BBC, Integral claims that the singer profited from using the photo—which shows her at an airport wearing a large hat—as her account is monetized and is used as a marketing tool for her music.
[Read: How to Protect Your Images on Social Media]
Of course this is not the first time a celebrity has been sued for posting paparazzi images of themselves without permission. As reported by the BBC, model Gigi Hadid, actor Liam Hemsworth, and reality star Khloe Kardashian have apparently faced similar cases, as did singers Ariana Grande and Justin Beiber, who settled with complaints brought by photographer Robert Barbera. Jennifer Lopez was sued by Splash News and Picture Agency for a similar infringement but the company dismissed the complaint without prejudice.
In a case we reported on last year, hoops star LeBron James posted a cropped photo of himself dunking a basketball in a game against the Miami Heat to his Instagram and Facebook accounts—which has tens of millions of followers—without photographer Steven Mitchell’s permission. That post quickly became the center of a copyright infringement battle with Mitchell claiming “unauthorized use” of the image and filing suit against the basketball player and his companies Uninterrupted Digital Ventures and LRMR Ventures, LLC. for $150,000. LeBron later countersued Mitchell for $1,000,000. In February of this year, LeBron agreed to a settlement with the photographer for an undisclosed amount.
[Read: What Photographers Need to Know About Copyright Law]
When, in 2019, a lawsuit for copyright infringement filed by paparazzi against supermodel Gigi Hadid was dismissed, our legal writer, copyright lawyer Aaron Stark, wrote that, “Whatever feelings you may have about the paparazzi taking unconsented pictures of celebrities in public spaces, it is settled law that they have the right to do so, and own the copyright to whatever images they take. Thus, Hadid’s publication of the image on her Instagram constitutes infringement.”
At the time, Stark also pointed out two wrinkles in the case: Hadid’s defenses and the court’s ultimate ruling. “Hadid had argued, among other defenses, that because she had turned to the camera and smiled, she was a co-author of the image, or at least held an implied license because the image depicted her likeness,” he wrote. “Co-authorship occurs when more than one party works together to create a copyrighted work. The idea that a model can be a co-author of a photographer’s work is a frightening proposition and would greatly change how photographers produce images in all contexts. But in order to be a co-author of a work, you must meet the requirements of an author: namely, you must have inserted more than a minimum of creativity into the work. Simply smiling does not cross this threshold of creativity.”
Ultimately, that case was dismissed because the plaintiff had not properly registered the photographs with the Copyright Office. In the case of Dua Lipa, Integral Images had applied to register copyrights for the images but the request was granted on February 20 of this year, long after Lipa’s Instagram post, according to records from the U.S. Copyright Office. We will have to wait and see what the outcome is on this case.