[will_brown]

"Fairey settled his civil case with the AP out of court."

Looks like Fairey paid up, and I imagine AP gets a royalty (and past royalties) for every sale of the image, not just a lump sum for damages.

"...Fairey maintain his work fell under fair-use laws."

It would have been interesting had the civil case actually gone to verdict - I tend to think a Judge or Jury would have ruled in Fairey's favor, like you allude to in your post.

In ETW v. Jireh, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit rejected a right of publicity claim brought by Tiger Woods against an artist who depicted Woods and other golf legends, holding that the transformative nature of the work exempted it from right of publicity liability under the First Amendment. Thus, this is not even a fair-use defense, but a first amendment defense, and the first amendment should be even more protective in the case of political speech where Fairey's work was of the leading candidate for POTUS at the time.