The street artist Shepard Fairey and The Associated Press have settled their long-running legal battle over the well-known “Hope” campaign poster of Barack Obama.

Mr. Fairey, who sued The Associated Press in 2009 as it began to accuse him of copyright infringement for using one of its photographs as the basis for the poster, said that he did not appropriate any copyrightable material and that his use of the photograph, which showed Mr. Obama looking up pensively, constituted fair use under copyright law.

Last year Mr. Fairey admitted that he had misstated which A.P. photo he had used for the Obama image and that he had submitted false images and deleted others to conceal his actions, leading to a criminal investigation in addition to the civil case. Mr. Fairey originally said that he had used a photograph from an April 27, 2006, event at the National Press Club in Washington, where Mr. Obama was seated next to the actor George Clooney. Instead, the photograph he used was from the same event, but was a solo image of Mr. Obama’s head. The photograph was taken by Mannie Garcia for The A.P.

Mr. Fairey said that he had initially believed that The A.P. was wrong about which photo he had used, but later realized that the agency was right.