What goes around, comes around

Fist-mx

I've been seeing alot of mention of Shepard Fairey being sued by the AP for using one of they're images to make his (brilliant) Obama poster.

I had a run-in with Fairey's people a while back when I sent him an email asking if it was ok to make some posters for my company based on some of his posters (just to hang on the walls of the office, not to sell). I was redoing the art (fist shape) from scratch, tracing some of the elements, tweaking them, adding other elements, changing the colors, etc in order to bring the work within what I considered to be fair-use.

I got an mail back from his "Artist managment"-person working at Studionumber-one telling me that "No", I wasn't allowed to do it and that they would send lawyers after me if I did do it.


Unfortunately we cannot allow you to use our illustration. The reason
is because the illustration you want to used was used as a logo for our
clothing company which also is used on our tee shirts and there are
some copyright and trademark issues for the usage. We are flattered but
we would not feel comfortable with it, plus we own all copyrights and
trademarks internationally for all of Shepard's illustrations and
graphic design work. Thanks for asking!

So they own the copyright of the fist, but AP doesn't own the copyright of the Obama picture?

I guess what goes around, comes around. I don't agree with the AP, but at the same time I'm a little pissed off that Fairey is trying to take the high road now that it's convenient for him, especially when he claims that he didn't make money off it, which he obviously did by getting huge exposure and selling more of his work.

And what about these fist brushes, featured on PSDtuts?