World | Tue Feb 16, 2016 2:44pm EST

Fox News, publisher, settle copyright dispute over iconic 9/11 photo

NEW YORK | BY ANDREW CHUNG

A pair of copyright lawsuits over Fox News Network's use of an iconic photo of three firefighters raising the U.S. flag at the site of the World Trade Center ruins following the Sept. 11 attacks have been settled, an attorney for Fox News said on Tuesday.

North Jersey Media Group (NJMG) "will discontinue its copyright infringement claims against Fox News, and Fox News will discontinue its copyright infringement and unfair competition claims against North Jersey Media," Dori Ann Hanswirth of Hogan Lovells said in a statement.

The terms of the deal were confidential and a trial set for Tuesday morning did not go ahead as planned. An attorney for NJMG could not immediately be reached for comment.

NJMG, which publishes The Record and Herald News newspapers, owns the rights to the famous photo, which was taken by then-employee Thomas Franklin. For many Americans, the picture became a symbol of resilience after the hijacked plane attacks on New York and Washington in 2001 that killed nearly 3,000 people.

The publisher sued New York-based Fox News, a unit of Twenty-First Century Fox Inc , in 2013 in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, after Fox placed the photo on the Facebook page of host Jeanine Pirro, juxtaposed with the World War Two photograph of U.S. Marines raising an American flag on Iwo Jima.

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