The sculptor who created Wall Street’s famous “Charging Bull” statue is suing Random House for putting a photograph of the sculpture on the cover of a book about the collapse of Lehman Brothers.

Yesterday, according to a Wall Street Journal report by Chad Bray, artist Arturo Di Modica “filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, alleging the book, A Colossal Failure of Common Sense: The Inside Story of the Collapse of Lehman Brothers, by Lawrence McDonald and Patrick Robinson, uses an unauthorized image of the bull on its dust jacket.”

Of course, as the article also notes, the 7,000 pound statue itself is “unauthorized” — the WSJ says it showed up “unannounced in front of the New York Stock Exchange in 1989 and was soon moved to Bowling Green in lower Manhattan, where it has been on ‘temporary’ display for 17 years.” What’s more, while the statue freeloads on city property, Di Modica has patented it and, as the WSJ notes, this isn’t the first time he’s sued someone for using using a photograph of it.

Random House, in any event, had no comment.