Rapper Cardi B wins California trial over explicit album cover art

Oct 21 (Reuters) – A California federal jury on Friday rejected claims that musician Cardi B misused a person’s picture on the duvet of her first 2016 mixtape album.

The quilt of “Gangsta Bitch Music, Vol. 1” didn’t violate plaintiff Kevin Michael Brophy’s publicity or privateness rights by depicting an altered picture of one other man with Brophy’s distinctive again tattoo performing oral intercourse on the favored rapper, the Santa Ana jury discovered after a four-day trial and a day of deliberations.

Brophy’s 2017 lawsuit sought at the least $5 million in damages from Cardi B and an order blocking her from utilizing his likeness.

Legal professionals for Brophy and Cardi B, whose given title is Belcalis Almanzar, didn’t instantly reply to requests for touch upon the decision.

Brophy, from Costa Mesa, California, mentioned in his lawsuit that he works for a “socially-conscious surf and way of life firm” and described himself as a household man with a spouse and two younger kids.

He mentioned he confronted “uncomfortable feedback, questions, and mock” after Cardi B launched the specific mixtape cowl that includes a person with Brophy’s distinctive tattoo photoshopped onto his again.

Through the trial, Brophy referred to as the tattoo of a tiger preventing a snake his “Michaelangelo.”

The New York rapper argued that the duvet’s use of the design qualifies as “transformative” beneath mental property regulation and is constitutionally protected.

The tattoo was used “in an nameless method, as a single constructing block” within the advanced cowl picture, Cardi B mentioned in a courtroom submitting.

She additionally mentioned the mannequin who posed for the duvet was “Black, with hair,” whereas Brophy is a “middle-aged Caucasian with a shaved head.”

Reporting by Blake Brittain
Enhancing by David Bario and Rosalba O’Brien

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