Summary: Actress Lindsay Lohan, and her lawyers, have expanded the complaint filed against Take-Two Interactive, the publishers of the video game Grand Theft Auto V.
Actress Lindsay Lohan is working hard on her lawsuit against Take-Two Interactive, which is the publisher of Grand Theft Auto V, according to The Hollywood Reporter. The original, 10-page complaint has been replaced with a 67-page complaint that begins by discussing the “common interest among all celebrities, actors, singers, and athletes … to protect their likeness and personas from misappropriation by unscrupulous merchandisers.”
This lawsuit originated back in the month of July when a character in the video game named “Lacey Jonas,” who is an actress, was introduced and has to escape the paparazzi in the game.
The company asked for the lawsuit to be dismissed and requested sanctions on grounds that Lohan’s claim “is so legally meritless that it lacks any good-faith basis and can only have been filed for publicity purposes.”
In response to this request, the lawyers for Lohan added 45 pages of pictured exhibits to an amended complaint. One of the photographs was of the discs the games come on and they feature a blond, bikini-wearing woman holding a peace sign. The complaint states that the publisher “used a look-a-like model to evoke the persona and image” of Lohan by copying a photo taken of her back in 2007.
Her lawyers also claim that Take-Two has used an image of the character on merchandise including coffee mugs, T-shirts, posters and on advertising outlets such as buses, billboards, websites and buildings.
“The Defendants were in the business of selling games as opposed to artists displaying artwork in galleries for profit where unauthorized images or portraits of individuals were reproduced in limited editions as opposed to the mass production for commercial promotion and financial gain.”
A statute-of-limitations defense has been raised by Take-Two in response to the lawsuit from Lohan. Take-Two claims that the original complaint alleged that the announcement of the mission from the video game came in June 2013, which is more than one year prior to the complaint being filed.
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Image credit: The Hollywood Reporter