Trump could face copyright lawsuit for exploiting his mugshot: legal expert

Donald Trump has raised a fortune by putting his mugshot taken at the Fulton County jail on merchandise hawked by his campaign – but it could come back to cost him.

Legal experts are warning sticking the image on T-shirts and other items could have opened his campaign up to copyright infringement complaints since law enforcement agencies hold the rights to images they circulate, Spectrum News reported.

Case Western Reserve University’s School of Law professor Betsy Rosenblatt says the photo has limits on how it's shared.

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“You’re prohibited from using it for a number of things without authorization,” she said.

“You’re prohibited from reproducing it, making a derivative work of it, distributing it without authorization, or that is to say distributing anything that isn’t the one copy you already lawfully have, and various other things. Making a public display of it, making a public performance of it, which opens up all kinds of fascinating possibilities here.

Whether or not the Trump campaign will be sued for the use of the image is up to the Fulton County Sheriff's Office, but Rosenblatt says that's unlikely since it is “not going to undertake the expense and trouble of hiring copyright counsel and sending out takedowns and cease and desist letters, or in lawsuits."

Read the full report over at Spectrum News.