The suit demands a San Francisco judge not only grant the copyright to the monkey, but wants an order permitting PETA to “administer and protect Naruto’s rights in the Monkey Selfies on the condition that all proceeds from the sale, licensing, and other commercial uses of the Monkey Selfies, including Defendants’ disgorged profits, be used exclusively for the benefit of Naruto, his family and his community, including the preservation of their habitat…”
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The lawsuit asserts that the monkey authored the photographs by manipulating the camera by his own autonomous actions, and therefore he owns the photos.
The trial is ongoing but in the meantime, Slater has said that he will donate most of the money earned through sales of the photo to conservation projects.
In 2011 in Indonesia, Slater left an unattended camera on a tripod. Peta disagrees; with lawyer Jeffrey Kerr stating that the law does not restrict registration to humans. Through San Francisco-based self-publishing company Blurb, he has published a book called “Wildlife Personalities” that includes the “monkey selfie” photos. And in the United States, the term “authorship” implies that the work comes from human being, Cevallos said.
All this monkey business raises two interesting legal questions: Can an animal even get copyright for a selfie?
“The facts are that I was the intellect behind the photos, I set the whole thing up”.
“I sincerely wish my 5-year-old daughter to be able to be proud of her father and inherit my copyrights so that she can make my work into an asset and inheritance and go to university”.
The plaintiff in the lawsuit, filed at the U.S. District Court Northern District of California, is listed as “Naruto, a Crested Macaque, by and through his Next Friends”, including PETA and Antje Engelhardt.
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“I am sympathetic in my book for animals having rights to property in some circumstances, but in no way do I mean copyrights”, Slater said in an e-mail.
