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As previously noted on PWInsider.com, tattoo artist Catherine Alexander filed a lawsuit against World Wrestling Entertainment and WWE's videogame licensee 2K on 4/17 in the United States District Court of Southern District of Illinois, alleging that they are infringing on her copyright for tattoo designs that she has imprinted on Randy Orton, having been his tattoo artist since 2003.
Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc., 2K Games, Inc., 2K Sports, Inc., Visual Concepts Entertainment, Yuke’s Co., Ltd. and Yuke’s LA Inc. have also been named defendants in the lawsuit.
Anderson is claiming that all of her tattoo work on Orton are her original designs and that she has never given any of the defendants permission to recreate them in the WWE videogames. Anderson stated that she performed the tattoo work on Orton between 2003 and 2008 and that "are easily recognized by his fans and members of the public." She also noted that, in advance of the lawsuit obviously, she "submitted applications to register copyrights on each of the aforementioned works on March 15, 2018."
In the lawsuit, Alexander claims that she contacted WWE regarding material featuring Orton's tattoos being sold by the company in 2009 and they offered her a $450 fee for the rights to the designs, which she turned down and at the time, "told WWE that Plaintiff did not grant any permission to WWE to copy, duplicate or otherwise use or reproduce any of Plaintiff’s designs."
Alexander is claiming that by recreating the tattoos in the WWE videogames, the rights to her designs are being infringed upon.
In regard to the obvious question, which is whether Randy Orton had rights to the designs and gave WWE permission, Anderson alleges in the lawsuit that "Mr. Orton does not have ownership in the copyrights asserted herein and has no authority to and did not grant permission for Defendants to commit the acts complained of in this Complaint." Orton is not named as a defendant in the lawsuit.
Anderson has requested a jury trial and is seeking the court to rule that the tattoos are her copyrighted works and that the defendants infringed against her, and obviously, wants the court to rule that she is owed damages.
None of the defendants have responded to the lawsuit as of this writing.
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