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A trial date of 4/27/20 has been scheduled in the civil lawsuit brought by tattoo artist Catherine Alexander against World Wrestling Entertainment, Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc., 2K Games, Inc., 2K Sports, Inc., Visual Concepts Entertainment, Yuke’s Co., Ltd. and Yuke’s LA Inc. in the United States District Court of Southern District of Illinois, alleging that all of her tattoo work on WWE star Randy Orton are her original designs that she owns and that she has never given any of the defendants permission to recreate them in the WWE videogames, therefore they and other defendants have infringed on her copyrights.
In her lawsuit, filed last year, 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." She also alleged that she has previously contacted WWE regarding material featuring Orton's tattoos being sold by the company in 2009 and at that time, they offered her a $450 fee for the rights to the designs. Alexander claimed she turned that offer 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.
A settlement conference was set for last month but was canceled due to the court ruling that it was obvious no settlement would come from the discussions.
The case was at one point going to go to trial this year, but was pushed back after the original presiding Judge retired from the bench, requiring a new Judge to take over the case.
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