He's not a very good lawyer. The photographer owns the copyright interest in any photos they take. the subject may have an interest based on their 'right of publicity,' but that's something quite different.

In our copyright class in school, we were taught that photographers do give up copyright in the specific case of work-for-hire (with all the criteria for determining work-for-hire that entails; a la CCNV vs Reid).

I've certainly had to get "work-for-hire" verbiage stricken from client contracts, but I'd love to be wrong about that.

As far as I'm aware though, except for that, copyright is granted to the "artist" who created the work[1].

[1] With one famous exception: http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110713/11244515079/can-we...

But what patent troll cowboy was trying to assert is that if he is depicted in a photo then under copyright law he "owns" the photo. Although as the person you were replying to pointed out there is some basis for this notion under common law right to publicity, this is distinct from federal statutory copyright law (and in any case would not apply in the context of a news article).

Since his assertion has no basis in copyright law either: (a) he has an honest confusion regarding how that area of the law works or (b) he was relying on the reporter's assumed ignorance of the law to engage in some good old fashioned baseless legal intimidation in order to get his way. But that's not something a patent troll would do.

Another reading of what he was saying is that he believes that there are no photos of him which he doesn't own that are online.

If I were in his business I don't think I'd want my picture out there either. You can probably steal from people like this and 99.99% of those people do the "smart" thing and just get on with their lives. But if you send enough extortion letters, eventually you'll roll over a nutcase like a landmine and life will get "interesting" after that.

Who'd dare mess with a guy who poses in a hat like that?

He knows that he's such an asshole, he doesn't want his image out there in case of reprisal.

He does seem to have a nice smile, and probably has a firm handshake.

ugh.

If it wasn't clear; that statement is blatantly false.