United States: : No copyright protection for a “monkey selfie”
Jonathan Perl · IRIS: Legal Observations of the European Audiovisual Observatory · 2016
On 28 January 2016, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California issued an opinion that an Indonesian macaque cannot claim copyright over a “selfie” it made in 2011. The case arose when the organization People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (“PETA”) filed a lawsuit on behalf of the macaque Naruto, accusing the owner of the camera that was used to take the picture of copyright infringement for posting and profiting from the selfie.