Can monkey possess a Copyright?

Selfie of Naruto a black short-taled monkey [Photo provided = Wikipedia]

In 2011 British professional wildlife photographer David Slater visited Sulawesi Island in Indonesia to take pictures of extinct animals and his camera was taken away by a short black short-taled monkey Naruto. Naruto took hundreds of selfies while playing with captured cameras including a famous photo of Naruto smiling brightly.

Slater has published a book called Wildlife Personalities which contains selfies of the monkey along with photos that he took and many copies of the book were sold. It was published in Wikipedia an online encyclopedia and the monkey selfie became famous all over the world. However Slater caused controversy in 2014 when he asked Wikipedia an online encyclopedia to stop unauthorized plagiarism of the photo. Slater made such a request claiming that companies had influenced the sale of his photo books by plagiarizing his photographs without permission and publishing them for free.

The companies ignored Slaters request. In particular Wikipedia argued that the photographs copyright belongs to the monkey who took the picture. Futhermore in 2015 PETA(People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) an animal protection organization filed a lawsuit in Federal Court of San Francisco alleging Slater infringed on monkey copyrights asking the court to designate PETA as a caretaker to use the profits from the photos for Naruto.

The trial went through nine court battles over three years. As a result of the trial it was concluded that copyright is limited to humans and that animals have no copyright. Therefore PETAs lawsuit was dismissed and Slaters who did not took the photos directly copyright was denied. The court concluded that no one has copyright on the monkeys selfie. The U.S. Copyright Office concluded that copyright is a human work. It also fails to establish that PETA has a significant interest in the monkey Naruto and the American copyright law system determines that animals cannot be represented by legal representatives.

PETA refused to accept this and appealed. The two sides eventually reached an agreement on the endless lawsuit. Slater agreed to suspend the legal proceedings on condition that 25 percent of the related profits be donated to animal protection organization. However this time the court rejected the suspension of the legal proceedings oin the reason that Naruto did not participated in the agreement. PETA claimed that the agreement with Slater was still valid despite the defeat of the second trial.

I think this story is an important topic of conversation during the Fourth Industrial Revolution. It clarifies the criteria for determining could the creator can have the status of copyright legally in the situation not limited in monkey Naruto but also where figure which is not a human involve in creation such as artificial intelligence. Will this criterion be maintained in the future? I think Slater who claims to have lost money on this situation is actually the biggest beneficiary. Although there may be financial damage for now since it have been pressed through media he gained a biggest promoting effect so it might be him who became the best beneficiary.

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