For over a year, Cardi B has been facing a lawsuit from the model Kevin Brophy Jr. over the appearance of his back tattoo on the cover of Cardi’s debut 2016 mixtape Gangsta Bitch Music Vol. 1. Brophy claimed that his likeness was used without his permission in “a misleading, offensive, humiliating and provocatively sexual way.” On Friday, a judge rejected Cardi’s argument that the image is protected under transformative fair use and ruled that the case will head to a jury trial, The Hollywood Reporter reports.
“To constitute a transformative fair use, the revised image must have significant transformative or creative elements to make it something more than mere likeness or imitation,” U.S. District Court Judge Cormac Carney wrote, according to THR. “A reasonable jury in this case could conclude that there are insufficient transformative or creative elements on the GBMV1 cover to constitute a transformative use of Plaintiff’s tattoo.”
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