For all his flaws, bloggy celebrity matriarch Perez Hilton knows how to pick his slap fights. Last year, when paparazzi agency X17 plunked down a $7.5 million lawsuit against him for stealing their pictures, he fought back, asserting his rights to fair use and racking up gobs of press in the meantime. Perez (born Mario Lavandeira) fancies himself a defender of blogger's rights, but it seems he realized he had a weak argument against the latest copyright lawsuit threatened against him.

Last week, Creative Age Publications, a publisher of spa and beauty magazines, claimed that Perez ripped off his site's sparkly eye and fingernail logo from its Nailpro magazine. Instead of bitchily flipping the figurative finger in a blog screed, Perez promptly ceased and desisted, changing his logo to an animated cycle of cartoon renderings ... of himself.

So why did this all happen now? Los Angeles-based photographer Brooks Ayola, the man who took the original image for Nailpro, tells Radar he's been trying to get the image taken down for over a year. Without the benefit of a lawyer in his pocket, though, he only got as far as Perez's apologies over the phone and a pathetic plea: "but it's my branding."

"He was very self-important from the start," Ayola says of Perez, whom he calls "not a great human being."

Once Creative Age, who owns exclusive rights to the photo, took up the cause and threatened Perez with a $150,000 lawsuit, the branding conspicuously disappeared. "It's nice for it to be over," Ayola says, "but it would have been nicer to get paid for it."

The whole issue might not be over just yet. Even though he's removed the picture from the banner atop his site, Perez is still using Ayola's image in other places and as his widget for Mac OS X.

Messages sent to Lavandeira seeking comment were not returned.

Photo: Splash News & Picture Agency