denys-kutsevalov-shutterstock-com-3
30 March 2016Copyright

PETA to appeal against ‘monkey selfie’ ruling

The People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) has said it will appeal against a court ruling which said the ‘monkey selfie’ photograph does not belong to the macaque ape who took it.

Earlier this year, WIPR reported that Judge William Orrick of the US District Court for the Northern District of California rejected PETA’s claim and stated that any copyright ownership by animals is a matter for Congress, not the courts.

But in documents filed at the court earlier this month, PETA, through its representative law firm Irell & Manella, announced it intended to appeal against the decision at the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

In September, PETA sued UK photographer David Slater over what it claimed was the unauthorised use of the ‘monkey selfie’ image in his 2014 book “Wildlife Personalities”.

The disputed photograph is a portrait of a macaque ape taken during a trip to Indonesia in 2011. The photograph was taken by the ape, named Naruto, without intervention from Slater.

PETA said that the rights to the image should belong to Naruto and that all royalties generated from the distribution of the image should be used to benefit Naruto and other apes.

In response, Slater filed a motion to dismiss the case arguing that US law did not give animals the standing to assert copyright ownership.

Already registered?

Login to your account

To request a FREE 2-week trial subscription, please signup.
NOTE - this can take up to 48hrs to be approved.

Two Weeks Free Trial

For multi-user price options, or to check if your company has an existing subscription that we can add you to for FREE, please email Adrian Tapping at atapping@newtonmedia.co.uk


More on this story

Copyright
7 January 2016   A US court has dismissed a claim filed by the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals in which the organisation claimed that the copyright to the ‘monkey selfie’ photograph should belong to a macaque ape.
Copyright
1 February 2016   A US court has ordered the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals to take its ‘monkey selfie’ argument to Congress after it dismissed a complaint asserting that a Macaque ape should own the copyright to a photo it took of itself.