Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

CTOnews.com, Oct. 4-A tattoo artist has sued and won a lawsuit against 2K Sports and its parent company Take-Two for his unauthorized appearance in the "WWE 2K" game.

The tattoo artist, Catherine Alexander, sued 2K Sports and its parent company Take-Two in 2018, claiming her tattoo designs were used without her permission in "WWE 2K16", "WWE 2K17" and "WWE 2K18".

The tattoo involved is an original tribal design that Alexander applied to the upper back and arms of WWE superstar Randy Orton in real life. As a result, Orton's character model includes these tattoos in the WWE 2K game, as 2K tries to truly recreate his appearance.

In the initial lawsuit, Alexander claimed that she had contacted WWE in 2009 to discuss the sale of Randy Orton goods with her design, and that the WWE Alliance wanted to buy out the rights for $450, but she refused.

2K argues that the tattoos are reasonable because they are used to truly reproduce Orton, not Alexander's original expression.

But a jury in the Southern District Court of Illinois rejected this argument and decided that the use of Alexander's tattoo design in the game did not constitute fair use and she was entitled to compensation. The jury decided that Alexander was entitled to $3750 in damages. The jury also decided that since the profits of the game did not come directly from her tattoos, she was not entitled to any further compensation.

Although the final compensation may be small, it does provide a potential precedent for other tattoo artists who can file similar claims if their designs are copied to characters in video games.

CTOnews.com learned that Take-Two won a similar lawsuit in 2020 when tattoo company Solid Oak Sketches claimed it owned the rights to tattoos by NBA stars LeBron James, Kenyon Martin and Eric Bradso, which were used without permission in NBA 2K games. However, the lawsuit was unsuccessful and the judge held that Take-Two had implied permission to use the tattoos because its NBA agreement included the portrait rights of the players.

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