Kingmaker director takes legal action against agency for repeated unauthorised use of former First Lady's photos

Lauren Greenfield, the director of the film Kingmaker, said on social media that “legal action is underway” against Digital Out of Home (DOOH) Philippines, the advertising agency which twice lifted an image of former First Lady Imelda Marcos to post it on two different billboards in the National Capital Region.

The same image shows Mrs. Marcos, the widow of the late Filipino strongman Ferdinand Marcos and the mother of the current president who is his namesake, wearing the familiar red terno which she has worn on numerous occasions. It was made prominent and its copyright owned by Greenfield in her documentary of the Marcoses’ rise to and solidification of power for 20 years.

DOOH’s billboard using the image to tower over the NCR’s skyline was a digital birthday greeting to Mrs. Marcos on her 93^rd birthday last July 3. It first went viral because of the greeting’s wrong spelling, using “93th” to describe the occasion instead of the grammatically correct “93^rd.” As the first billboard spread like wildfire across social media, it caught the attention of Greenfield who called out its copyright infringement of images from her 2019 film. She also publicly asked who was the owner of said billboard and how to track down the payment for it.

Not long after, DOOH issued an apology to Greenfield, confessing that they were “unaware of your copyright, and we appreciate that you brought the matter to our attention. Please be informed that as soon as we were made aware of the issue, we immediately took the greeting down. We take full responsibility for the mistake, and we are truly sorry.”

However, the sincerity of the apology was questioned when a second albeit smaller billboard made by the same agency using the same unauthorised message was spotted.

If Greenfield wins her suit, the guilty party faces one to three years in prison and a fine of PHP50,000 to PHP150,000 (S$1,252 – S$3,758) for the first offense. A second offense carries a weight of three to six years of imprisonment and a fine of PHP150,000 to PHP500,000 (S$3,758 to S$12,525).

(Photos taken from Twitter page of Lauren Greenfield. Photo credit for these particular photos by KJ Rosales/The Philippine Star)