FanDuel Copied Photo Without Permission, Alleges Late Photographer’s Widow

FanDuel, without permission or authorization, “actively copied and displayed” on its website a photograph of New York Giants football star Saquon Barkley that the late Anthony Causi created, alleged the photographer's widow, Romina Causi, in her complaint Thursday (docket 1:24-cv-04686) in U.S. District Court for Southern New York in Manhattan. Causi died of COVID-19 in April 2020, and his wife acquired the rights to his photograph from her husband’s estate in August 2022 “by way of written assignment,” it said. FanDuel hasn’t implemented “adequate internal policies to verify copyright ownership before content use,” said the complaint. That indicates “a gross negligence in legal compliance,” which is essential for a company with FanDuel's "reach, capabilities, and level of sophistication,” it said. Cousi’s wife first observed the defendant’s infringement in July 2022, it said. The infringement includes a URL “for a fixed tangible medium of expression that was sufficiently permanent or stable to permit it to be communicated for a period of more than a transitory duration and therefore constitutes a specific infringement,” it said.