Cam’ron has been ordered to $50k for the use of a "famous 2003 photo" of himself on various Dipset merch without permission from the original photographer.
Cam'Ron has reportedly been ordered to pay $50k for using photo of him wearing pink fur coat
Photographer named Djamilla Cochran filed a complaint last April in New Jersey federal court against the Harlem native for his use of a shot they took back in 2003. The image, which shows the rapper-turned-reporter dressed in all pink while holding a flip phone up to his face, has since become one of his most recognizable images.
On Friday (Feb. 16.), Billboard reports, A federal judge has ordered Cam’ron to pay more than $50,000 to a photographer for using her photo – a shot of the Dipset rapper wearing a fuzzy pink coat and hat while holding a matching flip phone – on a slew of merchandise without permission.
In his ruling, the judge ordered Cam to pay $40,530 in so-called statutory damages — many times the $5,790 licensing fee that Getty Images would have charged him to use the image on commercial products if he had sought permission.
“The court finds that a statutory damages award of seven times the licensing fee is sufficient to compensate plaintiff for the infringement of her copyright and to deter future infringements by punishing the defendants,” the judge said. He also ordered the rapper to repay the $10,691 that Cochran spent to bring the lawsuit – a common add-on penalty in copyright cases.
Before Cochran filed the complaint, Cam'ron was reportedly notified that he had used the image without the required license to do so. “Getty Images notified defendants of their infringing activities by mail and email on multiple occasions,” Cochran's lawyers wrote in the complaint. “Despite those notifications, defendants continued to sell merchandise and continued to display the photograph on website and accounts.”
The complaint includes screenshots of Cam’s Instagram account sharing the image, with one instance dating as far back as 2014.
The photo was taken at the Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week Show in New York in 2003 and has since become one of the most iconic post-millennium images in hip-hop.