IP Law Daily, COPYRIGHT—D. Minn.: Mattress company failed to tag photographer, lawsuit moves forward, (Apr 1, 2026)

By Matthew Hersh, J.D.

The copyright infringement lawsuit survives a first brush with the courts.

A photographer who claimed that her photographs were used without proper attribution could move forward with an infringement claim because her agreement with the licensee expressly stated that failure to credit would “constitute copyright infringement,” the federal court for the District of Minnesota has held. But the court, in finding that the lawsuit stated a claim for direct infringement under the Copyright Act, struck claims for secondary infringement and alteration of copyright management information (Gryniewski v. Sleep Number Corp., No. 0:25-cv-01157-JRT-EMB (D. Minn. Mar. 30, 2026)).

The lawsuit arises out of a dispute between a commercial photographer and a mattress retailer. The photographer, Lauren Gryniewski, licenses architectural photography through her loan-out corporation, Round Three Photography LLC. She agreed to license some of her photographs to the mattress vendor, Sleep Number. The license agreement allowed the mattress company to use the photographs only for certain publications, social media, and print advertising. It also required the mattress company to credit the photographer for each use.

The photographer eventually came to believe that the mattress company had exceeded the scope of its license. In 2025, she brought a lawsuit against the company alleging copyright infringement, contributory copyright infringement, and violations of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act or DMCA. The mattress company moved to dismiss, leading to this opinion.

Standing. The court first found that the photographer had standing to bring the complaint. Traditionally speaking, the court noted, standing must exist at the beginning of the litigation. Here, the photographer initially brought the lawsuit on her own, but the mattress company pointed out that her loan-out LLC, not she, owned the photographs. So, the photographer and the LLC entered into a purportedly “retroactive” assignment documenting the transfer of ownership of the photographs as of 2022. The photographer then filed an amended complaint naming both her and the LLC as plaintiffs. Was this enough to cure the jurisdictional defect? The court found that it was.

The court gave two reasons for finding standing. First, the court noted, it was not clear that the photographer lacked standing to bring the initial complaint, even as the sole plaintiff, “given her role as the sole owner of Round Three and the references to her role as the photographer throughout the Agreement.” In any event, the court noted, Eighth Circuit precedent—a 1966 case called Dubuque Stone Products Co. v. Fred L. Gray Co.—made clear that the retroactive assignments were sufficient to remedy any defect. Moreover, given that the photographer and Round Three were now both joined as plaintiffs, the court noted, “dismissal based on the invalidity of the ownership assignments would be a strange and inefficient result.” The case would not be dismissed on this basis.

Copyright infringement. The court also refused to dismiss the copyright infringement claim. The mattress company argued that to the extent it failed to give the photographer credit, that was a contract issue and not a copyright issue. And to be sure, the court noted, the generally prevailing view under copyright law was that an author who sells or licenses her work “does not have an inherent right to be credited as author of the work.” But this case was different, the court noted, because the agreement specified that failure to credit “will constitute copyright infringement.” As such, the court noted, the failure to credit was not merely a covenant of the contract enforceable in contract. It was rather a condition to the agreement—a condition whose failure meant that the license did not exist. The copyright infringement claim would stand.

The infringement claim would also go forward on another basis, the court found. The photographer alleged not only that her works were used without credit but that they were used, among other things, for television advertisements. The mattress company argued that authority for use in television advertisements was implicit in the fact that the agreement authorized use in “websites [and] social media pages.” But whether the agreement implicitly authorized such use, the court noted, was “a question not ripe for resolution at this stage.” The claim would go forward on this ground as well.

Secondary infringement. But while the direct copyright infringement claims would stand, the secondary infringement claims would not. Under the state of law at the time, the court noted, secondary infringement arises if the defendant induces infringement, has a financial interest in infringement that it has the right and ability to prevent, or “materially contributes to another’s infringing activities and knows of the infringement.” (The third prong was sizably narrowed by the Supreme Court last week in the Cox Communicationsv. Sony Music Entertainment decision, as written about in Internet service provider Cox not liable for users’ music piracy, March 25, 2026). The complaint made only “conclusory allegations” about these claims, the court noted but did not plead any facts to support them. These claims would therefore fail.

DMCA. The court also dismissed the photographer’s claim under the DMCA. The photographer claimed that the mattress company violated the DMCA by publishing her photographs without credit. But the DMCA makes it unlawful to “intentionally remove or alter” copyright management information such as attribution, the court noted—not merely to fail to provide it. This claim, as a result, would fail.

The Case is No. 0:25-cv-01157-JRT-EMB.

Judge: Tunheim, J.

Attorneys: David C. Deal (Deal Copyright Law) for Lauren Gryniewski. Adam Wolek (Fox Rothschild LLP) for Sleep Number Corp.

Companies: Sleep Number Corp.

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