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OFF BEAT: Green Day victorious in court battle over artist's drawing

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Among the more surprising revelations to come out of Green Day’s recent appeals court victory over a street artist suing them for copyright infringement is that bassist Tre Cool’s legal — and decidedly less cool — name is Frank Edwin Wright III.

On Wednesday, a three-judge panel the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously upheld a lower court’s dismissal of Los Angeles-based street artist Dereck Seltzer’s lawsuit against Green Day over the inclusion of one of his original drawings in a video projection the band used during its 2009 concert tour.

In his original lawsuit, filed in 2010 in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California, Mr. Seltzer claimed Green Day and its individual members violated federal copyright laws by displaying his “Scream Icon” image — not to be confused with Edvard Munch’s famous 1893 painting, “The Scream” — in a video clip that played during portions of the band’s live shows, including their performance of the song “East Jesus Nowhere.”

After 18 months of litigation, a federal judge ruled in August 2011 that Green Day did not violate Mr. Seltzer’s copyright for the image because its use, combined with the content of the song the band played while it was displayed, altered the expressive content or message of the image itself.

Additionally, the court ruled that the band’s use of the image was not overly commercial and had not affected the value of the image.