copyright liability fair-use publishing
Who is liable for copyright infringement in an &quot;unofficial book&quot; with copyrighted images, the publisher or the author?
<p><a href="https://law.stackexchange.com/questions/25322/how-can-an-unofficial-book-avoid-copyright-issues">This question </a> contains an example of a potentially infringing work, but I  believe it is fine because the book does not contain copyrighted images and is basically a discussion of another book.</p>

<p>My understanding is fair use applies as described by <a href="https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/179267/how-can-these-unlicensed-books-about-middle-earth-get-published-legally/179284#179284">another Stack Exchange answer here</a>.</p>

<p><a href="https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/pokemon-go-red-smith/1124914689" rel="nofollow noreferrer">I've seen "unofficial books" at Barnes &amp; Nobles that contain copyrighted images</a> such as the one below. I believe the images infringe copyright in such cases, as the author is not the copyright holder.</p>

<p><a href="https://i.stack.imgur.com/leGGL.jpg" rel="nofollow noreferrer"><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/leGGL.jpg" alt="an image of a Pokémon book written by an unaffiliated author"></a></p>

<p>Who is likely to get sued, the publisher or the author? </p>

<p>I feel like the publisher should know better than to publish copyrighted  material. Is it their responsiblity? </p>

<p><em>Disclaimer: This is an example. I don't know if the book above actually has permissions to use the art. For the sake of this hypothetical question lets pretend the artwork was not authorized.</em></p>

<p>Assuming for the sake of argument that the book is infringing, either the author or the publisher (or both) may be sued.  <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/106" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Copyright</a> includes several rights - the right to make copies, the right to create derivative works, the right to distribute and sell copies, etc.  Both the author and the publisher are going to do one or more of these things in the act of writing and publishing the book.  Being ignorant of the copyright status is not a defense to infringement, although if they were "not aware and had no reason to believe that his or her acts constituted an infringement of copyright", statutory damages <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/504" rel="nofollow noreferrer">may be reduced</a>.</p>

<p>It's possible that the publisher has a clause in the publishing contract saying the author must pay if the publisher gets sued.  However, this won't prevent the lawsuit from naming the publisher; it just means the publisher can later seek money from the author.</p>

<p>Determination of <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/107" rel="nofollow noreferrer">fair use</a> is a multi-factor test.  I can't say for sure whether the use of the image would or would not fall under fair use, especially without reading the book (context is important), although at a glance it seems unlikely that this would be fair use.  The nature of the use seems to be cover art for a book (probably against fair use), the nature of the copyrighted work is a creative image (against fair use), and it looks like the entire image is used (against fair use.)  I'm not sure how the use of image will impact the market for the original, although the image owners could argue that allowing anyone to use the image freely would impact the market for official licensed use.</p>
