{"id":4040,"date":"2025-02-05T19:03:42","date_gmt":"2025-02-05T19:03:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/biggie-estate-sues-target-home-depot-over-king-of-new-york-photo\/"},"modified":"2025-02-05T19:03:42","modified_gmt":"2025-02-05T19:03:42","slug":"biggie-estate-sues-target-home-depot-over-king-of-new-york-photo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/biggie-estate-sues-target-home-depot-over-king-of-new-york-photo\/","title":{"rendered":"Biggie Estate Sues Target & Home Depot Over “King of New York” Photo"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\n

\n\tThe estate of legendary rapper Notorious B.I.G. is suing Target, Home Depot and others over allegations that they sold unauthorized canvas prints of the famed \u201cKing of New York\u201d photo that was snapped just days before his death.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn a lawsuit filed Tuesday in federal court, Notorious BIG LLC claims the retailers sold prints illegally created by iCanvas \u2013 a small firm that the estate says showed a \u201ccomplete disregard for celebrities\u2019 personality rights, lack of respect for artists\u2019 efforts, and disdain for intellectual property law.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cDefendants specifically chose to use Mr. Wallace\u2019s persona, name, image, likeness \u2026 in an attempt to capitalize on their fame and extraordinary financial value,\u201d Biggie\u2019s estate writes, referring to his legal name, Christopher George Latore Wallace.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe image at issue in the new lawsuit is \u201cThe King Of New York\u201d<\/a> \u2013 a portrait of Biggie wearing a gold crown in front of a red backdrop, snapped in March 1997 only three days before the rapper was killed in a Los Angeles shooting.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe photos \u2014 taken by photographer Barron Claiborne<\/strong>, who is also named as a plaintiff in the lawsuit \u2014 are some of the most well-known images of the late rapper. One is featured in a huge mural<\/a> in his Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn, and the plastic crown featured in the image sold at auction in 2020 for a whopping $594,750.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn their Tuesday lawsuit, the estate and Claiborne say that iCanvas sold canvas prints of the images for more than eight years without permission. In addition to selling them directly, the lawsuit claims the prints were also sold by Bed Bath & Beyond, Home Depot, Nordstrom and Target \u2013 each of which is named as a defendant in the lawsuit.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhen contacted about the problem in 2023, Home Depot, Nordstrom and Target removed the offending products, the lawsuit says, but iCanvas and Bed Bath & Beyond allegedly continue to sell them.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe case claims that the sale of the images not only infringed Claiborne\u2019s copyrights to the King images, but also breached federal trademark law and violated the rapper\u2019s likeness rights.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cMr. Wallace\u2019s fan base has continued to expand since his passing,\u201d the estate\u2019s lawyers write. \u201cMr. Wallace\u2019s persona, name, image, likeness, and artistic works are so well known that they are almost universally and instantly recognizable, even by those born after he died.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe case could portend bigger problems for iCanvas. The lawyers for Biggie\u2019s estate say they\u2019re only a few of the \u201cvictims\u201d of a \u201cmulti-year unlawful campaign\u201d by the company to sell unauthorized prints of famous people and images, including musicians Beyonce, Prince, Jay-Z, Snoop Dog and LL Cool J.<\/p>\n

\n\tNone of the defendants immediately returned requests for comment on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

\n\tIt\u2019s not the first time the Notorious B.I.G. estate has sued over photographs. In 2019, the estate sued hip-hop photographer Chi Modu<\/strong> over his famed 1996 image of Biggie standing in front of the World Trade Center. Though Modu owns the copyrights to the image, the estate claimed he was violating the rapper\u2019s likeness rights by using it on merchandise.<\/p>\n

\n\tThat case settled last year on undisclosed terms \u2013 a deal that came with a warning from the estate\u2019s attorneys about the use of his image: \u201cPictures of Christopher cannot be commercially exploited without a license from our client.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The estate of legendary rapper Notorious B.I.G. is suing Target, Home Depot and others over allegations that they sold unauthorized canvas prints of the famed \u201cKing of New […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4041,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[4541,4542,70,1283,428,3855,479,3118,326],"class_list":["post-4040","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lawyers","tag-biggie","tag-depot","tag-estate","tag-home","tag-king","tag-photo","tag-sues","tag-target","tag-york"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4040","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4040"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4040\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4041"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4040"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4040"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4040"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}