Robin Thicke is the latest music industry figure to face a copyright infringement lawsuit for supposedly posting paparazzi pictures of himself on Instagram without paying to license the images.
Thicke is the target of a federal lawsuit filed on Monday (June 16) by celebrity photo agency BackGrid USA Inc., which claims to own the rights to two paparazzi shots that the singer and music producer posted to Instagram in 2022.
One of the images in question shows Thicke riding shotgun in a convertible, and the other depicts him leaving the restaurant Catch Steak with his now-wife, April Love Geary. These photos are no longer available on Thicke’s Instagram page, but the lawsuit attaches screenshots of these seemingly deleted social media posts.
“Defendants violated federal law by willfully infringing BackGrid’s copyrights to at least two photographs,” write BackGrid’s lawyers. “By uploading the Thicke photographs to the Instagram account, defendants encourage their fans to ‘share’ the photograph, thus causing others to also willfully infringe and multiplying the harm to BackGrid.”
BackGrid claims Thicke should have known better than to post these photos without proper licenses, since he’s a “sophisticated creator of copyrighted works” who himself owns more than 100 copyright registrations. The photo agency also points out that Thicke is no stranger to intellectual property law, having faced lengthy copyright litigation over his 2013 hit “Blurred Lines.”
The new lawsuit seeks a court injunction blocking Thicke from infringing BackGrid’s copyrights again, as well as monetary damages for the alleged wrongdoing. The agency notes that it “made exhaustive efforts to resolve this lawsuit with defendants prior to filing this action.”
A rep for Thicke did not immediately return a request for comment on the claims.
The lawsuit comes a month after BackGrid brought a similar case against Jennifer Lopez for allegedly posting two paparazzi pictures of herself outside a Golden Globes pre-party this past January without licenses.
Lopez and Thicke are far from the first celebrities to encounter this type of legal action over pictures of themselves on their own social media accounts. Artists including Miley Cyrus, Dua Lipa and Justin Bieber have all faced similar lawsuits in the last few years.
As Billboard wrote in 2022, U.S. copyright law is on the side of photographers and image licensers. Though it may seem unfair, celebrities do not automatically co-own images of themselves and therefore don’t have the right to repost them for free.