In October, Rick Genest, a model from Montreal who appeared in a
Lady Gaga video (and has been called "Zombie Boy" for his
distinctive skeletal body art) claimed that Twentieth Century Fox
Television infringed his copyright when it featured a character
wearing skeletal body makeup in an episode of FX's American
Horror Story. In an earlier, more high profile case,
Whitmill v. Warner Bros., tattoo artist Victor Whitmill
claimed that the "tribal" style tattoo appearing on actor
Ed Helms' face after a night of debauchery in the movie
Hangover 2 was an unauthorized reproduction of the face
tattoo design created by Whitmill for Mike Tyson, who appeared in
the first Hangover movie.
Although both cases ultimately settled out of court, they focus
attention on the novel legal issues arising from the intersection
of copyright law and tattoos, the threshold issue being: Are
tattoos protected under copyright law?
