Celebrity tattoo artist Kat Von D must respond to a photographer’s bid for the full Ninth Circuit’s review of her win in a copyright suit over her use of his Miles Davis photograph.
The court on Wednesday ordered her to address Jeffrey Sedlik’s petition for en banc review, which was filed Tuesday in the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.
En banc rehearings are rare, with the Ninth Circuit granting only 15 requests in 2025, according to the court’s statistics.
It’s even more rare for the appeals court to request replies. A Bloomberg Law review found the Ninth Circuit ultimately granted en banc rehearings in two of the seven prior cases from 2004 to 2025 where it issued similar response orders.
In January, a three-judge panel upheld the copyright win of Katherine Von Drachenberg—known as Kat Von D— declining to disturb a jury’s finding that a tattoo she inked of Davis and Sedlik’s Davis photograph weren’t substantially similar.
The panel refused to supplant jurors’ interpretation with their own, but two of the judges plainly called for the axing of the similarity test underlying the outcome.
The case dates back to 2021, when Sedlik field a complaint alleging a free tattoo Von D inked on a friend infringed his iconic portrait of the jazz legend. Kat Von D argued that her work qualified as fair use.
The case went to a jury after the US District Court for the Central District of Californiadenied Sedlik summary judgment, ruling the photographer failed to articulate the specific similarities between the works. The jury ruled for Von D in January 2024, and Sedlik appealed that May.
The case is Sedlik v. Von Drachenberg, 9th Cir., No. 24-3367, order issued 2/18/26.
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