Luminous Landscape Forum
Equipment & Techniques => Medium Format / Film / Digital Backs – and Large Sensor Photography => Topic started by: rainer_v on May 21, 2009, 12:06:50 am
-
sorry, i doubleposted this,- here is the title wrong written so i opened the same tread in new ...
-
what do you do if you find your images used by companies without permission? i just found several images on a webpage of a company, withoiut that they asked or bought the rights and without writing my name under the images. are there lawyers in the US who handle such abuse or how you do it to get your money fr this (ab)usage?
Are you images register with Copyrights Office?
If they are, you have a solid case and you can PM me for attorney referral.
If they are not you can sue for actual damages only and that would be the cost that the company had to pay you for the right to use them in the first place. The burden of prove is on you to show other companies who purchased from you previously and paid X$ for similar images.
I had sued both ways and settle before going to court.I also had learned to register every work with Library of Congress. Easy, simply and pays big way.
Andre
-
what do you do if you find your images used by companies without permission? i just found several images on a webpage of a company, withoiut that they asked or bought the rights and without writing my name under the images. are there lawyers in the US who handle such abuse or how you do it to get your money fr this (ab)usage?
I use Picscout service. They also have lawyers you can contact if you find anything yourself but you have to be their client first I believe.
There must be other collection agencies who specialize in it.
Grab screenshots and save the pages first. Make sure it's a commercial web site, not just kids taking images from google. If it's a commercial site contact them with a letter and an invoice, otherwise, ask to remove the images. Keep all the correspondence. If they refuse to pay the fee contact a collection agency they may help negotiating the deal.
But to get the matter to court you'll need your copyright officially registered before the violation took place. And it must be a significant sum of money, otherwise you'll lose more in legal fees.