Martin Shkreli and Wu-Tang Clan hit with copyright lawsuit

Former Turing Pharmaceuticals chief executive Martin Shkreli and hip-hop band Wu-Tang Clan have been sued for copyright infringement by an illustrator.

Yesterday, February 9, New York-based artist Jason Koza sued both parties over the alleged misuse of nine portraits in a book alongside the music album “Once Upon a Time in Shaolin”. The hip-hop band produced just one copy of the album and sold it to Shkreli last year for $2 million.

Shkreli has since become notorious after obtaining the manufacturing rights to the Daraprim drug while at Turing. He increased the price by 5,000%, from $13.50 to $750 per pill.

Wu-Tang Clan member Robert Diggs said that owning the album “is like somebody having the sceptre of an Egyptian king”.

Alongside the album is a 174-page leather bound book, which features three of Koza’s portraits of the band members.

Koza’s illustrations appear on the band’s website wudisciples.blogspot.com. He submitted the works in 2013 and 2014 to be featured as part of a weekly display of art on the website.

Before the album was released, Koza held discussions with the band about using the images but a deal was never finalised, according to the complaint.

Koza said he did not give permission to the band or record label Paddle 8 to use the illustrations.

The band has been named as a defendant for unfairly profiting from Koza’s works.

Shkreli has been listed for infringing Koza’s “exclusive right of public display” after the works were displayed in an article by news publication Vice.

“This story only has one problem: Koza never granted a licence for his works to be copied or displayed anywhere other than the wudisciples.blogspot.com,” the court document, filed at the US District Court for the Southern District of New York, said.