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Business News Legal
Photographer sues over unapproved use of Tupac photo on cannabis website
By Chris Cooke | Published on Monday 24 July 2023
A US photographer has sued online cannabis marketplace Leafly for allegedly using a photo he took of Tupac on its website without permission.
According to a lawsuit filed with the courts in New York last week, the Leafly site used T Eric Monroe’s Tupac image alongside some copy about blunts, ie hollowed out cigars filled with cannabis. “Blunts are durable, deliver a powerful high and are hard to visually differentiate from tobacco-filled cigars”, the website noted.
“That combination makes them more convenient than joints or pipes for smokers in places that heavily criminalise the plant”, it went on. “Especially for communities that were impacted by harsher marijuana laws and biased enforcement during the war on drugs”.
But why is that relevant to Tupac? Well, it continued, “in 1993, New York native Tupac taught Snoop Dogg how to roll a blunt in California, turning Snoop off of joints forever”.
That latter bit of trivia was illustrated with pictures of both Tupac and Snoop Dogg smoking a blunt, the former seemingly taken from Monroe’s website without permission. Hence the legal claim for copyright infringement.
“Defendants … have willfully copied, reproduced, and distributed the subject photography for financial benefit”, the lawsuit states, “by, without limitation, reproducing the subject photography online for commercial benefit, including without limitation at leafly.com, which is owned and operated by Leafly, on a page airing a news report containing Monroe’s subject photography”.
“Monroe has not in any way authorised defendants … to copy, reproduce, duplicate, disseminate, distribute, or create derivative works of the subject photography”, the lawsuit goes on. “On 12 Jan 2023, Monroe, sent Leafly a copyright infringement notice of the unauthorised use of Monroe’s copyrighted work. Leafly has failed to meaningful respond, necessitating this action”.
