A trial date of April 27, 2020 has been set for the civil lawsuit brought on by tattoo artist Catherine Alexander against World Wrestling Entertainment, Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc., 2K Games, Inc., 2K Sports, Inc., Visual Concepts Entertainment, Yuke’s Co., Ltd. and Yuke’s LA Inc., reports PWInsider.
Alexander – who has said she performed the tattoo work on Orton between 2003-2008 – filed the lawsuit last year, with the reason being that her tattoo designs were recreated and used on Orton’s character in the WWE 2K video games without her permission.
The artist says the designs are owned by her, and not by Orton, and the defendants are infringing the rights to her designs by recreating them in the video games. Orton himself is not named as a defendant.
Alexander had a similar standoff with WWE back in 2009 when she contacted the company regarding the selling of products with her designs on them. WWE offered her $450 for the rights to the designs. She declined and said she “told WWE that Plaintiff did not grant any permission to WWE to copy, duplicate or otherwise use or reproduce any of Plaintiff’s designs.”
There have been a couple of issues with the case so far. A settlement conference was scheduled for March, 2019, but was canceled due to the court ruling that there was never going to be a settlement as a result anyway.
Moreover, the trial was actually initially meant to take place this year at one point, but had to be moved back due to the presiding judge retiring and a new one taking over the case.
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