The post office owes $ 3.5 million for using a fake statue of liberty on a stamp

A sculptor who created a replica of the Statue of Liberty for a Las Vegas casino was The US Postal Service accidentally used a photo of his statue – rather than a photo of the original statue in the port of New York – on one of his most common stamps.

If you bought a stamp "forever" between 2011 and 2014, there's a good chance it's showing the face of the replica of the Statue of Liberty that sculptor Robert Davidson built for the New York-New York. The post office authorized a photo of Davidson's statue of the Getty Imaging Department for $ 1,500, initially believing it was a photograph of the original statue. (The license only covered the rights to the photograph of the Getty statue – not the statue itself.)

The stamp with the resulting image was released in December 2010; it took four months before someone reported the error to the post office. In March 2011, a spokesman said that the USPS "still loves the stamp design and would have chosen this photograph anyway." The post office continued to use the photo for almost three years before removing it in January 2014.

Davidson sued, arguing that royalties were due to him for the unauthorized use of the photograph. An image of his statue. But the post office argued that as a mere copy of a famous statue, Davidson's work was not entitled to copyright protection. La Poste also argued that the use of the image was permitted by the doctrine of fair use of copyright because the post office drew little value from the use of copyright. image of the slightly different version of the Davidson statue rather than the original. The claims were not in agreement. Davidson testified that he had tried to feminize the rather masculine appearance of Lady Liberty's original face. The court agreed and found that Davidson's facial alterations were significant enough to accord his originality to the work and to reject the government's fair use claim.

The last question the court had to decide was how much money Davidson needed. The USPS argued that many artists were eager to work on stamps, and therefore the post office never has to pay more than $ 5,000 for a license to use it. A job. USPS argued that Davidson should not get more than $ 10,000.

Davidson replied that he should get a percentage rate for each issued stamp. And with billions of stamps sold, this could be a very large number

The court eventually focused on the 3.24% of the stamps that have never been used – either because they were lost, either because they were kept by collectors. These stamps represent a pure profit for the post office, and the court found that it was reasonable for the post office to pay a stamp fee for these stamps.

These unused stamps accounted for more than $ 70 million in postal revenue. Davidson's three-year image was used. The court awarded Davidson a five per cent royalty for these unused stamps; he also awarded him $ 5,000 in damages for the nearly $ 5 billion stamps used to pay postage. Total Damage: $ 3.55 Million

The Post Office says it has new procedures in place to make sure it does not make a mistake like this.