LeBron James lawsuit against NBA 2K game dismissed by the Judge

LeBron James

A Manhattan federal Judge on Monday dismissed the lawsuit filed by the Lakers’ star LeBron James on the developer of the game NBA 2K for replicating his tattoo designs. 

Apparently, the company that developed the popular NBA 2K video games cannot be sued for copying James’ tattoo designs. Solid Oak Sketches were the ones who made the tattoo claimed the copyright statement stating that it was an infringement of their tattoo designs as the company holds the for them donned by the NBA players. 

LeBron James

Judge Laura Swain dismissed the lawsuit saying that the use of the tattoo is not a big issue and just a deliberate warrant filed by the company. 

Swain noted expert analysis found “only 0.000286% to 0.000431% of the NBA 2K game data is devoted to the Tattoos” which were mostly blurred and blocked by other players.”

She also stated that the use of tattoo was in a fair because they were no longer artists’ designs but part of the players’ likenesses. She further stated that the tattoo artists are already aware of the fact that stars’ ink would “appear in public on television, in commercials, or in other forms of media, like video games,”. 

The players have the liberty to use those tattoos as per their likeliness and as her ruling mentioned that the trio had given the NBA and Take-Two permission to accurately portray them in the video games. 

“Defendants reproduced the Tattoos in the video game in order to most accurately depict the Players,” the ruling noted in ruling for fair use.

Neither Solid Oak Sketches nor Take-Two Interactive could immediately be reached for comment Sunday due to the ongoing pandemic in the United States as more than 100k people has been tested positive of the Coronavirus.