Green Day Cleared Of Copyright Infringement After Co-Opting Artwork For Video

American punk rock group Green Day have been cleared of copyright infringement after being taken to court by artist Dereck Seltzer, Reuters reports. Seltzer was unhappy that the band – one of the most successful groups on the planet – used his 2003 artwork Scream Icon as a part of the video backdrop for their song East Jesus Nowhere when playing live on their 2009 tour.

The band's set designer Richard Staub saw a weathered version of the Scream Icon artwork on a wall in Los Angeles, snapped a photo and used it as the basis of the piece of work that provided the backdrop for the song.

The court heard that the band's use of the art was fair in that they did not directly profit from it (put it on t-shirts or other merchandise) and that the artist did not lose revenue and value of the art was not diminished by Green Day's use of it.

Staub's use of the artwork seems to have fairly blatant religious overtones, something that helped the band in their case as Seltzer's original doesn't appear to broach that weighty topic at all. This means that

Judge Diarmuid O'Scannlain wrote that there is new information and aesthetics in the band's use of the image.

“With the spray-painted cross, in the context of a song about the hypocrisy of religion, surrounded by religious iconography, (the) video backdrop using Scream Icon conveys new information, new aesthetics, new insights and understandings that are plainly distinct from those of the original piece.”

The band had filed for Seltzer to pay their $201,000 legal bill, but this was overturned as the artist's suit was not considered to be “objectively unreasonable”.