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11 February 2015Trademarks

Target triumphs in Rosa Parks image rights dispute

A US court has ruled that retail chain Target did not infringe the image rights belonging to late civil rights activist Rosa Parks.

In a ruling on Monday (February 9), the US District Court for the Middle District of Alabama, Northern Division ruled that Target did not infringe any of the rights associated with Parks's image, which was featured on goods the retailer was selling.

Target was responding to a lawsuit filed by the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self Development in November 2013, which claimed that the retailer violated Parks’s right of publicity and showed her falsely endorsing the products.

The institute, which has the rights to images of Parks, claimed it was due $5 million in damages.

At the centre of the row was a plaque sold by Target that contained a mosaic of images, photographs and quotations from the life of Parks, best known for her campaigning activities during the US civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s.

She is perhaps most famous for refusing to give up her seat on a bus for a white man in 1955.

In addition to the plaque, the institute claimed that seven books and one film about the life of Parks that were sold by Target infringed her right of publicity.

But in July last year, Target submitted a motion for summary judgment to the Alabama court, claiming that the sale of the plaque, the books and the film was protected under the First Amendment, which provides the right to free speech.

The court agreed and granted Target’s request.

It said that because the products “contain several elements reminiscent of the historic civil rights movement”, and their purpose is “telling the important story of Rosa Parks’s courage during the civil rights movement”, they are protected by the First Amendment.

Neither Target nor the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self Development responded to WIPR’s request for comment.

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