Mock Appeal: Associated Press v. Shepherd Fairey - Essay Example

Associated Press vs. Shepherd Fairey This case involves the Obama Hope poster ad the infringement of the plaintiff copyright, the evidence will prove that in the year 2008 Shepherd Fairey used the associated press poster taken in 2006 by Mannie Garcia an employee of AP and created, used and distributed the poster without licensing from the plaintiff who is the owner and this amounts to copyright infringement. The associated press has the claim of copyright infringement, intentional destruction of evidence ad intentional manufacture of false evidence.

All these claims are established y the facts of the case. The defendant was aware of what he was doing when he created false documents and sought to destroy the deleted documents. In thus doing the defendant was not acting in good faith. The defendant discovered an error and failed to notify his counsel who would have amended their complaint but instead concealed his mistakes, destroyed some documents and fabricated others. In copyright infringement the defendant admitted to have used the photograph without obtaining a license from the plaintiff who is the copyright owners of the picture in issue.

The defendant copied all the original and creative work without crediting or compensating the plaintiff, therefore this unlicensed work was not fair use on the part of the defendant (Fisher III et al, 2011). The plaintiff in the effort to establish a prima facie case of copyright infringement must show that the he is the owner of a valid copyright in the material at issue which is not contested in this case, the plaintiff must also show that his work was actually copied and the copying amounts to an improper or unlawful appropriation by the defendant which in our case is seen as the defendant using the picture as a reference work when creating the Hope poster.

The defendant may claim fair use that is under section 107 of the Copyright Act which provides that fair use of copyrighted work is not an infringement of copyright, fair use deems that the use of this work that is deemed copyrighted is transformative in such a setting where the purposes of the copyrighted work is different (Shinoskie, 2010). The plaintiff in countering this claim can rebut that the defendant was acting in bad faith by removing the copyright notice on the photo until a blogger detected the source of the original photo, and the defendant used his poster for commercial purposes thus the use of the photograph by the defendant is not seen in any way as transformative.

The plaintiff may also asset that the defendant had falsely asserted to using the Garcia Clooney photo and not the Garcia Obama photo as his work of reference. He later destroyed evidence and fabricated evidence in form of documents to support this assertion, thus misconduct (Burgunder, 2011).The defendant may also claim that not all aspects of the photograph are original expression due to the various modifications made on the poster by him; however the plaintiff will argue that copyright protection covers all parts of the pictures irrespective of whether the defendant made a verbatim copy of the photograph or not (In Patra 2014).

References:Fisher III, W. W., Cost, F., Fairey, S., & Feder, M. (2011). Reflections on the hope poster case. Harv. JL & Tech., 25, 243.Shinoskie, R. L. (2010). In Defense of Fairey and Fair Use. Ent. & Sports Law., 28, 16.In Patra, N. K., In Kumar, B., & In Pani, A. K. (2014). Progressive trends in electronic resource management in librariesBurgunder, L. B. (2011). Legal aspects of managing technology. Mason, Ohio: South-Western Cengage Learning.