Bloomberg Law
December 11, 2018, 8:29 PM UTC

Viral Photo of Wedding-Crashing Trump Is Not Fair Use for Hearst (1)

Kyle Jahner
Kyle Jahner
IP Reporter

An iPhone-snapped picture of President Donald Trump crashing a wedding is protected by copyright law, a federal judge said in finding that Hearst Communications Inc. infringed the rights of a bank executive who took the photo.

Wedding guest Jonathan Otto, a vice-president of Deutsche Bank AG, sued Hearst and other media outlets after they published his shot from a 2017 wedding at Trump National Golf Club, which went viral. Four other media companies settled with Otto, but Hearst argued that Esquire’s use of the picture satisfied standards of fair use.

The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New ...

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