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After roughly two years of court battles, the groundbreaking lawsuit asking a U.S. federal court to declare Naruto—a free-living crested macaque—the copyright owner of the internationally famous “monkey selfie” photographs has been settled.
PETA; photographer David Slater; his company, Wildlife Personalities, Ltd.; and self-publishing platform Blurb, Inc., have reached a settlement of the “monkey selfie” litigation. As a part of the arrangement, Slater has agreed to donate 25 percent of any future revenue derived from using or selling the monkey selfies to charities that protect the habitat of Naruto and other crested macaques in Indonesia.
The picture was taken in 2011 by "Naruto," a wild macaque that pressed the shutter on Slater’s camera. Did the primate own the rights to the picture ? In a tentative opinion issued last year, a district judge said there was "no indication" that the U.S. Copyright Act extended to animals. Slater, meanwhile, argued that the UK copyright license he obtained for the picture should be valid worldwide.
Sadly, we will never know what "Naruto" thinks of human copyright laws...