A 19-year-old French photographer is in the process of suing pop star Rihanna due to images used in her “S&M” music video. According to the photographer, Philipp Paulus there are several images from the “S&M” video that are very similar to pictures featured in a photography book his work was featured in.

There is one image in particular from the “S&M” video which is strikingly similar to one of Paulus’ photographs. In Paulus’ photograph a woman wearing a gown is pictured with her back against a wall with a sheet of plastic in front of her which is taped down by large black X’s.

“For legitimate reasons the use of copying Paulus’ work over a million times requires an agreement that protects the copyright and the achievements and creations of our client which has never been given by our client, neither to the artist Rihanna nor to her label Universal Music,” said Paulus’ attorney in a document obtained by RadarOnline.com. “According to this, the copyright laws of our client has been infringed and the worldwide million-wise exploitation of the video S&M is unlawful.”

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Paulus also gave his thoughts on the lawsuit and the video explaining to Radar that he doesn’t understand “Why a worldwide celebrity is not able to afford a creative director, who creates individual concepts and stagings, is incomprehensible to me. To create new things within the creative cosmos, you can only expect this to come from a real genius, there is no doubt about that.”

It is still unclear how much Paulus plans on suing the singer for. Neither Rihanna nor a rep for the singer have responded publicly to the lawsuit.

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