Startup Accused of Stealing Dodo Art for $150 Million Fundraiser

Colossal Biosciences Inc. allegedly raised millions of dollars off an artist’s dodo artwork, according to a lawsuit filed in the Western District of Texas.

John Niehuss spent months meticulously researching the dodo bird and creating an illustration that he would finish in 2017 and copyright in February 2023, he told the US District Court for the Western District of Texas.

That illustration appears as a “near identical copy” in Colossal’s $150 million fundraising and media push, Niehuss claims, “flipped on a vertical axis with some minimal added feather texture and slight shading and then inserted into a forest backdrop.”

Niehuss ...