Katy Perry was sued 150G after she and her team allegedly failed to provide payment for licensing for an image shared on her Instagram.
The image, shared back in 2016 around the time of the presidential election, depicts Perry in full makeup and costume as a faux Hillary Clinton. A friend of the pop star’s is nearby in the shot, dressed as Bill Clinton.
Oddly, the lawsuit isn’t coming from who you might be thinking it is. No one parodied in Perry’s pic is actually taking issue with the singer. Instead, Backgrid, a photo agency that claims to own the rights to the image, has filed suit.
Apparently, the image was taken by paparazzi back in October 2016, and Perry subsequently put it on her Instagram. Backgrid alleges that they not only own the image, but that Perry is hosting it on her Instagram account without paying them any licensing fees.
They claim to have contacted the singer’s team as early as 2017 and multiple times thereafter, to as recently as a few months ago.
You don’t get to be as big of a pop superstar as Katy Perry and not have a bunch of people sue you. When you’ve got a lot of money, everyone wants to swoop in and grab a few bucks for themselves. For example, last month a lawsuit from rapper Marcus Gray resulted in Perry and her co-writers having to relinquish $2.78 million.
That suit revolved around Gray’s claims that Perry’s 2013 single “Dark Horse” was actually a rip-off of his 2009 song “Joyful Noise.” It seems a federal jury found Gray’s case compelling, and the superstar singer and her collaborators were ordered to hand over the dough. Notably, the settlement amount is a far cry from the $20 million that Gray originally demanded, but his team has stated they’re pleased with the results.
Recently, Perry was also accused of sexual misconduct by model Josh Kloss, who met the singer while filming the “California Girls” music video. In August, the model alleged that Perry had pulled his sweatpants down and exposed him to a number of people around. Perry has not responded to Kloss’ claims.
