Smile, please!

Not to knock lawyers, because I have some friends in that line of work, and I know there are lawyers who read this column word for word every day, looking for something to sue me about.

All I'm going to say is, I know that you fine folks admitted to the bar in these United States (and thrown out of bars in Amsterdam) are better than this story makes you look.  Hell, you'd HAVE to be.

I say this because a ruling has come down from a federal appeals court, stating that animals may not sue for copyright protection.

The macaque took this picture? My selfies
should come out this nicely.

How does that come, you ask? What does an animal do that even makes him or her think about copyrights?

We don't know that they even think about copyrights, but here's the deal.

It seems there was a monkey - a 7-year-old crested macaque living at a bird sanctuary in Indonesia named Maruto.  No, the monkey was named Maruto, not the bird sanctuary, and he snapped some selfies one day when wildlife photographer David Slater left his camera sitting around.

I am not kidding!

Slater took his camera and the film, and published the photos.

The animal rights group known as PETA (People For The Ethical Treatment of Aniamals) sued Slater, claiming that the monkey owned the copyright to the pictures. Because the monkey took the pictures, you see.

"We must determine whether a monkey may sue humans, corporations, and companies for damages and injunctive relief arising from claims of copyright infringement," Judge Carlos Bea wrote for a three-judge panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

"We conclude that this monkey — and all animals, since they are not human — lacks statutory standing under the Copyright Act," Bea said.

Judge N. Randy Smith agreed, calling PETA's suit "frivolous."

"The concept of expanding actual property rights — and rights broadly — to animals necessitates resolving what duties also come with those rights," he wrote, "and, because animals cannot communicate in our language, who stands in their shoes?"

In a landmark ruling seen by humans and primates alike as "the biggest thing since the Snopes Trial," Smith said the federal courts lack the authority to hear a suit purportedly brought by an animal.

Accordingly, the court placed the case of Top Cat v Officer Dibble  357 U.S. 480, on the stet docket.