In July, Associated Press photographer Mannie Garcia joined the copyright lawsuit brought by the Associated Press against California-based artist Shepard Fairey over Fairey's now-infamous Barack Obama poster.

In 2006, Garcia shot a photograph of Barack Obama while freelancing for the AP. In 2008, Fairey used Garcia's image as a reference for his Obama poster. The AP and Garcia are now suing Fairey for copyright infringement, and the courts must determine whether Fairey is protected under fair use laws...

In ongoing efforts to deter online content infringement, the Associated Press will launch the first wave of its new content-registry website in November to manage, tag and track the use of AP and member stories, photos and videos. The system, which will cover only AP text this year, will soon expand to include photos, videos and member text next year.

Although no specific technical details have been released yet about the portal, the AP has said that it is developing a digital permissions format that will be endorsed by London-based Media Standards Trust (MST), a nonprofit research and development organization...

Attorneys representing California artist Shepard Fairey in his legal dispute with the Associated Press (AP) over copyright ownership of a Barack Obama presidential campaign poster image are now citing a legal defense called, the doctrine of unclean hands‚ to help negate claims of copyright infringement.

The doctrine states that parties cannot seek damages for an activity in which they partake themselves. Referencing this doctrine, Fairey's team maintains that the AP regularly uses images in stories without permission from the artist...