Lindsay Lohan Sues Rockstar Over GTA 5
Lindsay Lohan is making headlines again, this time because she has chosen to file a lawsuit against Take-Two Interactive and publisher / developer Rockstar Games for a character in Grand Theft Auto 5. Back in December 2013, there was an initial report that Lohan was going to sue the company, but that never was confirmed until now. The lawsuit that Lohan filed claims that the character Lacey Jones is an “unequivocal reference” to Lohan. The character Lacey Jones is identical to Lohan’s likeness, from her clothing line to the Chateau Marmont hotel where Lindsay Lohan once lived. This is specifically what the lawsuit says
” The portraits of the Plaintiff(Lohan) incorporated her image, likeness, clothing, outfits, Plaintiffs clothing line products, ensemble in the form of hats, hair style, sunglasses, jean shorts worn by the Plaintiff that were for sale to the public at least two years.”
Luckily for Rockstar Games they may have a safety net thanks to the Digital Media Law Project, which states that:
” As a general matter, you will not be held liable for using someone’s name or likeness in a creative, entertaining, or artistic work that is trans formative, meaning that you add some substantial creative element over and above the mere depiction of the person. In other words, the First Amendment ordinarily protects you if you use someone’s name or likeness to create something new that is recognizably your own, rather than something that just evokes and exploits the person’s identity.”
The reason why Lindsay Lohan is now suing Rockstar Games and Take Two Interactive is due to how successful the game became. The first day GTA 5 was released it, made $800 million in one day. Eventually, the game racked in over $ 1 billion in the next 72 hours. Since then, the game has shipped 33 million copies on just Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, but since the E3 announcement that GTA 5 will be coming to Xbox One and PlayStation 4, GTA 5 will continue to make even more money. Grand Theft Auto 5 is the most successful game Rockstar Games has ever developed.
If you hadn’t heard of Rockstar, they have developed previous Grand Theft Auto games, but number five definitely tops them all. If you’re not familiar with Grand Theft Auto or Rockstar, then you might be familiar with other games they have developed such as: Max Payne, Read Dead Redemption, and L.A. Noire.
After hearing about all this, maybe Lindsay Lohan should transition to the video game industry.
[ Image via Rimac.org ]
