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Jury Trial Begins In Randy Orton WWE 2K Tattoo Lawsuit
The trial has officially begun at last for the lawsuit over Randy Orton’s tattoos in the WWE 2K franchise. PWInsider reports that the jury trial began on Monday, with eight jurors were picked out of a pool of forty followed by opening statements. The trial continues today. As noted, Orton is set to be a witness in the trial and will testify this week.
Tattoo artist Catherine Alexander filed the suit against WWE, Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc., 2K Games, Inc., 2K Sports, Inc., Visual Concepts Entertainment, Yuke’s Co., Ltd. and Yuke’s LA Inc. back in April of 2018. Alexander alleges that she owns all the original designs for her work on Orton. The lawsuit states that she never gave the defendants permission to recreate them in the video games and thus they are infringing on her copyrights.
The trial, which has been postponed several times over the past few years for various reasons, is set to start on September 26th in the U.S. District Court Southern District of Illinois. A judge ruled in September of 2020 that WWE and Take-Two had copied five of Alexander’s original designs that she holds valid trademarks on but denied a summary judgment for Alexander, sending the case toward a jury trial.