Thanks to Daniel Takash of Captured Economy for this one: “Some good news emerging from silly litigation: Solid Oak Sketches, which holds the rights to several tattoos featured on NBA players (yes, you can copyright a tattoo) failed in its suit against 2K games for the depictions of the tattoos in the NBA 2K games. The court found that the use of the designs was not infringing because the use of the work in the video game was transformative, the degree of copying was not substantial, and that the game makers had a non-exclusive (albeit non-implied) license to the use of the tattoos when they were using the likeness of the NBA players depicted.”
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Not relevant to this case, but legal antiquarians might be amused by a century-old sketch from British satirist Saki (H.H. Munro), linking a tattoo to IP law:
“The Background”
http://www.eastoftheweb.com/short-stories/UBooks/Bac.shtml