The AP is threatening to sue Shepard Fairey for basing his iconic Obama poster off of an AP photo. Glen Friedman, a friend of the artist, sides with Fairey:
He actually donated every penny he made from it back into the campaign to get Obama elected. Unfortunately all the after market sales of his posters he has no control over, and the people who bootlegged his stuff and sold it of course he has no control over. and when he first created it it was mainly a wheat paste poster made to go around the country before super tuesday, it got viral after that. At which point he probably just should have approached AP for rights which he probably could have gotten pretty cheaply for this use, just to be 100%. But so goes the life of a graffiti/street artist.
The Dish 