NBA 2K series maker Take Two is being sued for an alleged copyright infringement in Manhattan federal court by Solid Oak Sketches. The petitioner claims they own the copyright to the actual tattoos of Lebron James, Kobe Bryant, Kenyon Martin, DeAndre Jordan and Eric Bledsoe.
According to an ESPN report, Solid Oak Sketches worked out a deal with the players so that they own the copyright to the player's tattoo designs as seen in the game. The designs include the butterflies on Kobe's arm and the child's portrait and script scrolls on LeBron's forearms.
The tattoos are seen in the NBA 2K14, 2K15 and 2K16 respectively. In particular, some of the tattoos on Kobe and LeBron were prominently featured on the cover photos and advertising materials of the NBA 2K games.
A separate rights deal should have been worked out between Take Two and Solid Oak to ensure that the tattoo designs shown in the games have proper permissions. Petitioner contends that Take Two studio knew about the deal but simply chose to ignore it, Forbes reported. Solid Oak allegedly offered to license the tattoos for $1.1 million.
Oved and Oved LLP attorney Darren Oved told Bloomberg that tattoos will be accorded legal recognition as long as the design is "sufficiently original." He also said that the legal scrutiny to determine whether the work is "sufficiently original" will be the same regardless of the medium. Meanwhile, Take Two has yet to issue a comment on the lawsuit
The issue on the copyright of tattoos is yet to be determined by the courts but a similar case filed in 2013 by tattoo artist Christopher Escobedo who sued THQ for copyright infringement. He sued the game maker over the video game UFC Undisputed which features a large lion tattoo in the ribcage of mixed martial arts fighter Carlos Condit.
