Shepard Fairey Sentenced for Comtempt Charge in "Hop" Poster IP Case

NEW YORK -- Shepard Fairey, the street artist who created the "Hope" portrait of Barack Obama that became the symbol of the President's 2008 campaign, was sentenced to community service by a New York court on Friday after admitting he had lied about which image he used.

The Los Angeles native became a celebrity for creating the red, white and blue image of Obama silhouetted above the word "Hope" on a poster. Fairey pleaded guilty to one misdemeanor count of criminal contempt in February for doctoring and destroying evidence once he realized the photograph of Obama he used for the poster belonged to the Associated Press (AP). "I'd like to apologize for violating the court's trust, which was the worst thing I've ever done in my life," Fairey said at his sentencing hearing in Manhattan federal court.

Prosecutors had sought some prison time for Fairey, who faced up to six months in prison on the charge, but the Court sentenced Fairey to serve 300 hours of community service, the details of which were not immediately decided.

Although lawyers at Friday's hearing sparred for nearly an hour over what sentence Fairey should receive, the word "Obama" was not uttered a single time. The conclusion of the case coincided with Obama accepting his Democratic Party's nomination on Thursday night to run for re-election in November.

The dispute over the "Hope" poster began when Fairey pre-emptively sued AP in February 2009 seeking a ruling that his work was protected from AP's potential claims over the copyright of the original photograph of Obama. AP then countersued for copyright infringement. After it was discovered that some of Fairey's records had been improperly deleted, he admitted that he had intentionally lied about which photograph he had based his poster on. He was charged because deleting his files and altering them was a violation of an order by the federal judge overseeing the civil dispute with AP.

The judge said both parties must share all documents with the other side. In January last year, AP and Fairey settled their copyright dispute. AP said in a statement on Friday that it was "glad this matter is finally behind us." The photograph that Fairey based his poster on was taken by AP photographer Mannie Garcia at a panel discussion at the National Press Club in April 2006 when Obama was still a U.S. senator from Illinois.

The case is USA v. Shepard Fairey, U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, No. 12-cr-180.

Obama's Hope Poster Creator Settles Lawsuit with AP

Earlier this moth, Shepard Fairey, the artist behind the iconic Barack Obama "Hope" poster, agreed to settle a fair use claim he filed against Associated Press (AP). The news organization, whose work-for-hire photographer in 2006 had snapped the image Fairely used to stencile his posters, took legal action against Fairey in 2009, long after the image became the symbol of Obama's campaign message and of victory, for copyright infringement in 2009.

Fairey's design was created in one day and printed first as a poster. Fairey sold 350 of the posters on the street immediately after printing them. It was then more widely distributed—both as a digital image and other paraphernalia—during Obama's campaign. The image became one of the most widely recognized symbols of Obama's campaign message, spawning many variations and imitations, including some commissioned by the Obama campaign. This led The Guardian's Laura Barton to proclaim that the image "acquired the kind of instant recognition of Jim Fitzpatrick's Che Guevara poster, and is surely set to grace T-shirts, coffee mugs and the walls of student bedrooms in the years to come."

In January 2009, after Obama had won the election, Fairey's stenciled portrait version of the image was acquired by the Smithsonian Institution for its National Portrait Gallery.

Last year, the New York Times reports, Fairey admitted that he had misstated which A.P. photo he had used for the Obama image and that he had submitted false images and deleted others to conceal his actions, leading to a criminal investigation in addition to the civil case. Fairey originally said that he had used a photograph from an April 27, 2006, event at the National Press Club in Washington, where Obama was seated next to the actor George Clooney. Instead, the photograph he used was from the same event, but was a solo image of Mr. Obama’s head. The photograph was taken by Mannie Garcia for The A.P.

Fairey said that he had initially believed that The A.P. was wrong about which photo he had used, but later realized that the agency was right.

In settling the civil lawsuit, “The A.P. and Mr. Fairey have agreed that neither side surrenders its view of the law,” The A.P. said in a statement on Wednesday. “Mr. Fairey has agreed that he will not use another A.P. photo in his work without obtaining a license from The A.P. The two sides have also agreed to work together going forward with the ‘Hope’ image and share the rights to make the posters and merchandise bearing the ‘Hope’ image and to collaborate on a series of images that Fairey will create based on A.P. photographs.” The statement added that the two sides had agreed to “financial terms that will remain confidential.” More.