Monkey Selfies, Elephant Paintings – Is There Copyright In Animal Generated Works?

Keywords: Animal Generated Works, Copyright Infringement, Copyrightability, Threshold of Originality

In 2011, British wildlife photographer David J. Slater spent some time in Indonesia taking pictures of crested black macaques when he temporarily left his camera unattended. Reportedly, some of the monkeys began playing with the camera and (accidentally?) took some excellent self-portraits, including a now-famous one dubbed the "Monkey Selfie". After the image had gained some media attention, Wikimedia, the non-profit foundation behind the free encyclopedia Wikipedia, added the selfie image to its Commons, a library of public domain images. Slater made repeated attempts to prevent distribution of the image, claiming that he held copyright in the image: "A monkey pressed the button, but I did all the setting up." The Wikimedia Foundation, however, refused to acknowledge Slater's claim and issued a statement that the picture was a matter of public domain: "[A]s the