USPS designed a 37—cent stamp featuring a photo of the Washington, D.C., memorial covered in snow. When USPS released the stamp, in 2002, it paid $1,500 to John Alli, a retired Marine whose photograph of the memorial they used, but did not compensate Gaylord (Alli took his photo in January 1996, and licensed it to the USPS in 2002; the stamp was retired three years later).

In 2006, artist Frank Gaylord, who designed the figures of soldiers at the Korean War Veterans Memorial, sued USPS for violating his intellectual property rights. The initial ruling, in 2011, awarded the sculptor $5,000. Gaylord and his lawyers appealed. Instead they asked for 10 percent of the $17 million dollars the stamp generated for the USPS. The US Court of Federal Claims awarded Gaylord $685,000 but the federal circuit overturned this decision.

Law360, New York (February 04, 2015,) — The Federal Circuit on Wednesday affirmed a decision that the government should pay $573,000 to a sculptor who claimed the government infringed his copyright on a portion of the Korean War Veterans Memorial by putting the monument on a postage stamp.

The appeals court, which about three years ago overturned the Court of Federal Claims’ far lower award and remanded to that court for further consideration, ruled that the lower court’s new award of 10 percent of the U.S. Postal Service’s estimated $5.4 million in profit Read more