The Artful Jurist

The Shepard Fairey case, in which the artist is trying to prevent the Associated Press from making a copyright infringement claim against him for using without permission an A.P. photo of Barak Obama that Fairey turned into an illustrated poster—known as the "Hope" poster—now has the artist alleging, among other things, that the A.P.'s hands are unclean. That is, in his court pleadings, he says the A.P.'s claims are barred by the doctrine of "unclean hands" because the news organization often publishes photos of the artist's copyrighted work (and other artists' copyrighted works) without permission.

According to the plea, the A.P. is not only using the photos as part of its news dissemination operation. It's also offering them for sale and license through its image licensing database.

News reporting is a safe harbor for fair use of copyrighted works. But the licensing of the images for things that may be other than news...that raises an interesting point.