ESPN Faces Suit Over Rockwell Painting

NEW YORK—The Curtis Publishing Company has filed a lawsuit against ESPN over the use of a Norman Rockwell painting, the New York Times reports via the Associated Press. Curtis has accused the sports network of willful copyright infringement in the U. S. District Court in Manhattan.

The suit states that ESPN showed a full screen shot of the painting, which depicts three umpires looking up as rain begins to fall, without a license in the second episode of its television series about the 1977 New York Yankees, The Bronx Is Burning. The painting first appeared in the Saturday Evening Post on April 23, 1949, and was later donated to the National Baseball Hall of Fame & Museum in Cooperstown, N.Y.