Trump may have violated copyright law by selling mugshot merch

Donald Trump’s campaign may have violated United States copyright law by selling merchandise featuring the former president’s mugshot, legal experts have warned.

The Republican front-runner’s campaign wasted no time capitalizing off the mugshot made of him at the Fulton County Jail in Atlanta, featuring the former president scowling into the camera.

Merchandise emblazoned with the historic photo and the slogan “Never surrender” was quickly hawked for between $12 and $34.

Within just three days, the Trump campaign made $7.1 million off the merch, which included T-shirts, mugs, koozies and bumper stickers.

But legal scholars say that money may rightfully belong to the Fulton County Sheriff’s Office, which took the photo, as US copyright law stipulates that the law enforcement agency that takes a mugshot is the legal owner of it.

“In the context of photographs taken by law enforcement during the booking process, the author of the mugshot photograph is the law enforcement agency,” the 2022 University of Georgia School of Law’s Journal of Intellectual Property Law states.

As such, Betsy Rosenblatt, a professor at Case Western Reserve University’s School of Law, says there are limitations to what people may do with such photographs.

“You’re prohibited from using it for a number of things without authorization,” she told Spectrum News 1 Ohio. 

“You’re prohibited from reproducing it, making a derivative work of it, distributing it without authorization, or that is to say distributing anything that isn’t the one copy you already lawfully have, and various other things. Making a public display of it, making a public performance of it, which opens up all kinds of fascinating possibilities here.”

The Trump campaign did not make any alterations to the mugshot, so he cannot claim that he substantially altered it from its original in a way to create something new, MSNBC’s Dean Obeidallah said.

Since the campaign is profiting off the image, it also cannot claim fair use, Obeidallah added.

The Trump campaign appeared to be aware of the potential legal violation, since Chris LaCivita, one of Trump’s top advisers, tweeted on Aug. 24: “If you are a campaign, PAC, scammer and you [are] try raising money off the mugshot of @realDonaldTrump and you have not received prior permission …WE ARE COMING AFTER YOU you will NOT SCAM DONORS.”

It would ultimately be up to the Fulton County Sheriff’s Office, though, to decide whether to sue the Trump campaign and any others that have used the mugshot for financial gain.

The department may decide it is “not going to undertake the expense and trouble of hiring copyright counsel and sending out takedowns and cease-and-desist letters, or in lawsuits,” Rosenblatt said.

On the other hand, MSNBC reports, the Fulton County Sheriff’s Office may decide the millions made off the photo rightfully belongs to it — at a time when it is in desperate need of funds to address the horrific conditions at the Fulton County Jail.

Recently, Fulton County Sheriff Patrick Labat pleaded with commissioners for funds that he said he desperately needs for the prison, describing how “hundreds of toilets and sinks” are out of order.

“It’s a human crisis, and I have been begging for the resources for 887 days,” he told the commission, according to 11 Alive. 

“I’m really, really tired of begging for money to do my job.”

The Fulton County Sheriff’s Office declined to comment on the allegations. The Post has also reached out to the Trump campaign for comment.

Trump was booked in that notoriously dirty prison on Aug. 24 on 13 counts of allegedly tampering in Georgia’s 2020 election.

He has vehemently denied wrongdoing and decried the ordeal as “election interference.”