A Las Vegas artist is suing pop star Ariana Grande, alleging federal copyright infringement over an image of a woman in a candle flame in the pop star’s widely viewed God Is A Woman video.
The lawsuit was filed in US District Court in Nevada by lawyers for Vladimir Kush and his company Kush Fine Arts Las Vegas.
The lawsuit calls the image that appears a little more than a minute into Grande’s 2018 music video nearly identical to works that Kush painted and copyrighted in 1999 and 2000.
He is seeking unspecified monetary damages and a court order to remove the video from the internet.
The four-minute video has been viewed almost 200 million times on YouTube since it was posted last July.
The lawsuit lists Grande under the name Ariana Grande-Butera, along with defendants Universal Music Group and the video director, producer and production company.
Kush’s lawyer in Las Vegas, Mark Tratos, represented silent magician Teller, of Penn & Teller fame, in a 2012 copyright lawsuit that found a Dutch entertainer guilty of stealing a magic trick and selling it online.
