Can Courts Mandate Tattoo Removal?

There's an interesting topic of conversation in the air these days. Can tattoos violate copyright laws? And if so, does that mean that the courts could order that people must get tattoo removal? Please note before reading this that this issue has not been taken up by the courts at this time. It's just food for thought. The issue came up in the news recently when the media turned its attention to the copyright violations that singer Prince was accusing his fans of making. (Learn more from this previous post on the topic.) His outrageous claims of copyright infringement led to the sarcastic comment that he might go so far as to ask fans to remove any tattoos that were inspired by him or his works. More recently, Slashdot reported on "everyday copyrights" and the difficulties of applying copyright law to the actions of people in the modern world. This sparked a conversation by readers on that site about the ways in which tattoos could potentially violate copyrights. It was noted by one reader that a personal tattoo doesn't appear to violate the "fair use" rule that is normally applied when it comes to copyrights. But it brings up an interesting area of concern. What if a company decides that a tattoo is indeed a copyright violation and proceeds to take the issue to court? (After all, you can sue anyone you want to if you are willing to invest the time and money.) With the increasing link between tattooing and advertising which we mentioned in yesterday's post, this isn't an impossibility. It would certainly take a lot for a court to decide that a tattoo on someone's personal body was a violation of copyright. My guess is that the most likely case for this would be if a high-profile celebrity got a tattoo which a company then decided to attack for violation. The argument would be that the celebrity gets enough attention for that tattoo to be a threat of some sort. Again, this isn't particularly likely, but it's not impossible. Question of the Day: If a tattoo was found by a court to be in violation of copyright, do you think that the court should be allowed to mandate tattoo removal? photo link