Monkey selfie case concludes

Naruto the monkey has finally won through. David Slater is a photographer who was working with macaques in Sulawesi several years ago when a monkey grabbed his camera and took some photos including the now famous selfie - see here for previous reports. As owner of the camera Slater tried to assert his rights to the photo. In court PETA asserted that non humans can own IP rights. At least full equal rights have over many years vested slowly, so by logical extension animals, even AI programs may one day own IP. 



Well a deal has been done which allows the court case to die quietly. In fact the laws are relatively clear that humans must on IP. Anyway there was limited financial value to the case. Naruto was awarded a percentage of Slater’s future royalties for the photo. These will probably be limited one expects, so probably there is a little face saving around this. 

IP Komodo applauds all cases involving Indonesian animals naturally. He wonders who owns copyright in his blog now?  And which rights organization he needs to threaten to bite to collect his royalties?! Pass the answers to Naruto as well please!