Copyrighting Tattoos

An interesting law suit has been brewing between the tattoo artist who created Mike Tyson's famous facial tattoo and the Warner Bros studios in respect of Ed Helms' character in their recent release, The Hangover 2.  In the movie, Helms sports a facial tattoo very similar to Mike Tyson's original tattoo.  The case re-opens a murky area of copyright law relating to tattoos and body art, including questions of whether skin art is copyrightable.  A few law review articles have touched on this issue previously, notably Cotter and Mirabole's article:  Written on the Body: Intellectual Property Rights in Tattoos, Makeup, and Other Body Art, 10 UCLA Entertainment Law Review 97-138 (2003).  It will be interesting to see what the courts do with this case.