There’s a good chance you’ve seen the United States Postal Service Lady Liberty stamp. Perhaps you thought this was a picture of the Statue of Liberty. It turns out, however, it was actually a picture of a sculptor’s version of the Statue of Liberty. Because of this technicality, a judge just ruled that the USPS owes this sculptor millions of dollars. 
 
 First, a little background. Robert S. Davidson made a replica of the Statue of Liberty that lives in front of the New York-New York Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas. When the USPS came out with a new stamp in 2011, some experts noticed that the image used seemed to be of Davidson’s hotel piece and not of the actual Statue of Liberty. The Post Office even owned up to the mistake. 
 
 Davidson subsequently sued the Post Office, claiming that his piece of art was unique and different from the original Statue of Liberty. And a judge agreed. “We are satisfied that plaintiff succeeded in making the statue his own creation, particularly the face,” the judge declared last week. “A comparison of the two faces unmistakably shows that they are different.” The ruling goes on, “Having determined that the face of plaintiff’s sculpture is distinct, original, and protected, we find that defendant’s use was infringing.” 
 
 In short, because the USPS mistakenly used an image of Davidson’s work and not the actual Statue of Liberty, the organization owes the artist royalties: $3,554,946.95 in royalties, plus interest, to be exact. 
 
 This is one way to become rich by being a replica artist, I suppose. ||||| U.S. Postal Service, File/Associated Press – This undated image provided by the Postal Service shows the Lady Liberty first class postage stamp first issued in 2011. The design was not based on the statue in New York Harbor but on a replica outside the New York-New York casino in Las Vegas. 
 
 Stamp collectors and history fans will remember the faux pas the U.S. Postal Service committed in late 2010 when it issued a “Forever” stamp depicting the Statue of Liberty and claimed it was the original in New York Harbor. 
 
 It was not, it turns out, the statue that has welcomed immigrants from the tip of lower Manhattan for more than a century, but a modern replica in front of a New York City-themed hotel casino on the Las Vegas Strip. The error was discovered by a stamp collector who noticed some distinct differences between the statues. 
 
 The Postal Service conceded that it had used the wrong image and said it would “reexamine our processes” to prevent the error from happening again. But a spokesman said the stamp design was so popular that the agency “would have selected this photograph anyway.” He also said postal officials had wanted to issue a Liberty stamp that was distinctive and different from numerous previous versions bearing the image of the statue. 
 
 The statement could now come back to haunt the Postal Service. The Las Vegas sculptor who built the Western Lady Liberty is now suing the agency in U.S. Federal Court for copyright infringement. 
 
 The Postal Service chose the image from an online photography service, Getty Images. But it did not acquire the rights to duplicate it from the artist, Robert S. Davidson, probably because postal officials assumed they were issuing a stamp with a famous image [in New York] that already was in the public domain. 
 
 But having said it would have selected the photograph, the Postal Service may be hard-pressed to argue that it made a mistake. It has continued to issue the stamp with the picture of Davidson’s statue. It has been extraordinarily popular and sold about 4 billion copies. And it’s still in circulation. 
 
 Postal Service spokesman Roy Betts said he could not comment on pending litigation. 
 
 The lawsuit, filed last week, claims that Davidson’s sculpture “brought a new face to the iconic statue — a face which audiences found appeared more ‘fresh-faced,’ ‘sultry’ and ‘even sexier’ than the original.” 
 
 The sculptor’s lawyers take pains to distinguish the replica as a piece of art with many differences from the original, from a “softer, more feminine and realistic silhouette” to the “fuller chin, a friendlier expression and pronounced cupid’s bow shape of the upper lip” on the Las Vegas copy. 
 
 The lawsuit claims that the Postal Service knowingly committed copyright infringement: Once officials admitted their error, they continued to print billions of stamps depicting the Las Vegas replica without seeking the rights to print it. 
 
 “Defendants, through the USPS, determined that it was in their financial best interest to continue to infringe upon Davidson’s rights, as the cost to discontinue the infringing activity exceeded the marginal cost of royalties that they knew or should have known were owing,” the lawsuit claimed. 
 
 Davidson does not specify the damages he is seeking. His case could be strengthened by a federal court judgement in September, which awarded the sculptor responsible for the design of the Korean War Memorial $685,000 in damages after Postal Service used a photo of the memorial on a stamp without the sculptor’s permission. The court found that the artist was entitled to royalties of 10 percent on sales of stamps to collectors and on sales of merchandise featuring the stamp design.
– The United States Postal Service's money woes just got $3.5 million worse, and the Statue of Liberty is to blame. A judge ruled last week that the agency did commit copyright infringement when it used an image of Robert S. Davidson's Statue of Liberty on a stamp it issued in 2011. The Lady Liberty that towers over New York Harbor was designed by French sculptor Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi; Davidson's replica stands before the New York-New York Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas, reports Fast Company. The Washington Post (which has an image of the stamp) in December 2013 reported that the USPS had obtained the image from Getty Images but didn't also seek permission from Davidson, likely because the USPS assumed what it was using was in the public domain. Not so. A stamp collector had identified the mix-up in 2011, and the USPS was made aware—but then it printed another 1.13 billion of the stamps on top of the 3.5 billion it had already made, reported Artsy in 2017. As such, the suit claimed the infringement was knowingly committed. Identical copies of works in the public domain (which the statue is) aren't covered by copyright infringement protections. But Davidson argued in his suit that he wasn't trying to create a replica but rather to craft a fresher, more feminine version. Per the ruling, "he envisioned his mother-in-law as inspiration ... and viewed her picture every night during the construction of the face of the statue." The judge ruled the "plaintiff succeeded in making the statue his own creation, particularly the face." The amount owed: $3,554,946.95 in royalties, plus interest. (The USPS has announced a new kind of stamp.)