A court split a photograph's pose from its expression

The image

The dispute concerns two photographs of Michael Jordan: a 1984 image by photographer Jacobus Rentmeester showing Jordan in a ballet-inspired, legs-split leap toward a basketball hoop, and a photograph Nike commissioned afterward that the company used to design its 'Jumpman' logo. The Ninth Circuit's opinion recounts that Nike had licensed Rentmeester's photograph for slide use, then produced its own photograph replicating aspects of the pose and setting before creating the Jumpman silhouette, which the panel describes only in terms of the case's procedural allegations, not as an image it independently evaluates for its visual qualities.

What the documents show

The panel, filing its opinion on 27 February 2018, affirmed dismissal of Rentmeester's suit at the pleading stage. It held Rentmeester plausibly alleged Nike had access to his photograph and that the two images showed 'obvious conceptual similarities' sufficient to presume copying, but concluded he had not plausibly alleged Nike copied enough protected expression to establish infringement. The opinion states that 'a photographer's copyright is limited to the particular selection and arrangement of the elements' in the image, that Rentmeester could not copyright the pose itself, and that his photograph merited broad protection given the wide creative latitude available to him. Even so, the panel found the two photographs differed enough in selection, arrangement, camera angle, and timing that they were not substantially similar as a matter of law, and that the Jumpman logo, derived from Nike's own photograph, was accordingly not substantially similar either. One judge dissented in part, arguing similarity is usually a factual question unsuited to a motion to dismiss.

Production context

For anyone recreating a known photograph on a shoot, an advertising campaign, a biopic reenactment, a reference-board restaging, the opinion's framework is directly relevant: it treats a photograph's protectable content as the specific choices of pose expression, camera angle, lighting, and framing, not the underlying idea of 'an athlete leaping toward a hoop.' That framework, stated by the court itself, is a documented boundary a production can consult, though how closely any new photograph tracks those choices remains a case-by-case comparison the opinion does not reduce to a formula.

Reference versus imitation

The opinion draws its own line between referencing an existing photograph's idea, an athlete's leap toward a basket, not protectable, and imitating its particular expression, the exact pose, angle, and composition, which can be. The Ninth Circuit's holding that no infringement occurred is specific to these photographs' objective differences and was left undisturbed when the Supreme Court denied certiorari on 25 March 2019; it is not a general rule that any photographic recreation is lawful, a limit the opinion signals by grounding its outcome in the particular details compared.

• Which specific choices, pose, angle, lighting, does a recreation actually track from a known photograph?
• Does a claimed 'similar shot' precedent describe idea-level similarity or expression-level copying?
• What did the cited court compare in reaching its outcome, and how fact-specific was that comparison?

Rentmeester v. Nike is a documented, fact-bound ruling about two specific photographs, useful for the analytical structure it applies rather than as a blanket license for photographic recreation.