How a "Sulphurous" Statue of Liberty Costs More than $ 3.5 Million at the United States Post Office | Smart news

Forever stamps can cost you 50 cents each these days, but that's nothing compared to what a particular stamp will cost to the United States Postal Service (USPS). Tom McKay at Gizmodo reports that a judge ordered the agency to pay a sculptor over $ 3.5 million after failing to obtain his permission or to pay him royalties for having affixed his replica Statue of Liberty. The confusion occurred in 2010, when the USPS printed a Forever stamp with a close-up of the face of the Statue of Liberty from the Getty Images photo collection. After 3.5 billion stamps were issued, a collector noticed that the statue, which arrived in New York harbor 133 years ago in June, looked a little different from the one he remembered and that He had made a mistake. 19659003] It is at this point that the agency has realized its madness. Instead of choosing an image of the Statue of Liberty over New York Harbor, she had chosen an image of the Statue of Liberty replica in front of the New York-New York hotel and casino. on the Las Vegas Strip

. This would not be a big problem since the statue is in the public domain, and any identical replica of the statue would also be in the public domain, says Isaac Kaplan at Artsy . The Vegas version of Lady Liberty is not exactly the same as New York's. McKay reports that Robert S. Davidson, the Liberty Strip's sculptor said in his copyright infringement lawsuit, filed in 2013, that his version "brought a new face to the iconic statue – a face that viewers found cooler, "sultry" and "even sexier" than the original. "

Kaplan reports that in 2017 a judge allowed the case to advance, and he concluded last week with a federal court judge claims that "Sexy Liberty" was, in fact, very different from the real McCoy , reports Cale Guthrie Weissman at Fast Company awarding Davidson over $ 3.5 million in royalties.

"We are convinced that the plaintiff managed to make the statue his own creation, especially the face," wrote the judge. "A comparison of the two faces undoubtedly shows that they are different … Having determined that the face of the applicant's sculpture is distinct, original and protected, we find that the defendant's use was in violation." 19659005] According to a 2013 article ] Washington Post by Lisa Rein, the expensive kerfluffle occurred because the USPS went in search of a new image of the Statue of Liberty which was distinct from what it has published before.The close-up image of the replica has proved so popular that even after realizing that they had used the wrong Liberty, the USPS continued to print the stamps, producing an estimated 4.9 billion copies.A spokesperson in 2013 said that the USPS would have anyway chosen this photograph "they had first known that it was a replica because the Ign was so popular, writes Rein. This assertion made it difficult for the agency to claim that it was simply an error, and led to charges in the lawsuit that they continued to violate the rights. Davidson author even after learning of their mistake

. USPS has faced in recent years. In 2015, a judge stated that he owed $ 540,000 to the sculptor of the 19 soldiers known as the Korean War Veterans Monument Column for using an unauthorized image of the statues on a postage stamp. 2003.

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