The U.S. Supreme Court rejected an appeal from a photographer who said Nike Inc. stole key aspects of his iconic photo of basketball star Michael Jordan and used them to sell billions of dollars in shoes and other merchandise.
The justices, without explanation, said March 25 they won’t hear arguments from photographer Jacobus Rentmeester, whose portrait of Jordan gracefully leaping to dunk a basketball-first appeared in Life magazine in 1984. Nike started using a similar photo of Jordan the following year, then converted it to a silhouette that became the logo for the company’s Air Jordan sneakers.
