Former President Donald Trump’s recent foray into the world of merchandise, featuring his historic mugshot, could lead him into legal hot water, according to legal experts. Trump, who was arrested last month in Atlanta, Georgia, on racketeering charges linked to the 2020 presidential election, has been using his mugshot on various products, from T-shirts to mugs, resulting in significant financial gains.
Trump’s arrest marked a historic moment as he became the first former U.S. president to have his own mugshot. After sharing the photo on X (formerly Twitter), he captioned it with “Election interference” and the words “Never surrender.”
Following his release from the Fulton County Jail, Trump’s campaign began selling merchandise featuring his booking photo, causing a flurry of sales that amounted to millions. Other entrepreneurs also jumped on the bandwagon, offering their own versions of “mugshot merch” on online platforms like Amazon and Etsy.
The Trump campaign has raised $9.4 million since his mug shot was taken at the Fulton County jail, according to Trump spokesman Steven Cheung, who says they’ve made $1.7 million off of selling T-shirts with the mug shot printed on them.
— Kate Sullivan (@KateSullivanDC) August 30, 2023
However, legal expert Betsy Rosenblatt, a professor at Case Western Reserve University, cautioned that this merchandising frenzy could potentially infringe upon copyright laws.
“You’re prohibited from using it for a number of things without authorization,” Rosenblatt explained. “You’re prohibited from reproducing it, making a derivative work of it, distributing it without authorization, or distributing anything that isn’t the one copy you already lawfully have, and various other things. Making a public display of it, making a public performance of it, which opens up all kinds of fascinating possibilities here.”
The copyright for the mugshot is owned by the Fulton County Sheriff’s Office, which would ultimately decide whether to take legal action against Trump and others profiting from the image. However, Rosenblatt suggested that the Sheriff’s Office might choose not to pursue legal action due to the unique nature of the case.
“But it’s also reasonable to think that the Fulton County Sheriff’s Office might think, you know, this is a public document, it belongs to the world in a way, [the] copyright belongs to us,” Rosenblatt explained. “But the news about it belongs to the world. And we’re not going to undertake the expense and trouble of hiring copyright counsel and sending out takedowns and cease and desist letters or lawsuits.”
While the legal implications surrounding the use of Trump’s mugshot on merchandise remain uncertain, it is clear that this novel approach to post-presidential branding has ignited a debate about the boundaries of copyright law in the digital age.
