No, he actually won at first, but the US agencies responsible for it agreed that PETAs arguments were true.
You can not own copyright of something you didn't created, when someone — be it a toddler or an animal — steals your camera and takes a photo, you do not own it.
Now the real question is if the animal owns the photo, or if no one does.
But US law allows unintuitively that animals can own things, and manage them. As lots of rich people had the idea to set a pet as their heir in their will, precedent was made for that.
So the only question is if the court would follow the precedent, or follow the agencies' opinion that the image is public domain.
Which led to the settlement, which argues that 25% of the image belongs to the management of the habitat where the ape lives, and the rest to the photographer.
You can not own copyright of something you didn't created, when someone — be it a toddler or an animal — steals your camera and takes a photo, you do not own it.
Now the real question is if the animal owns the photo, or if no one does.
But US law allows unintuitively that animals can own things, and manage them. As lots of rich people had the idea to set a pet as their heir in their will, precedent was made for that.
So the only question is if the court would follow the precedent, or follow the agencies' opinion that the image is public domain.
Which led to the settlement, which argues that 25% of the image belongs to the management of the habitat where the ape lives, and the rest to the photographer.