Posts Tagged: "photographs"

Rentmeester is asking the nation’s highest court to answer the question of whether copyright protection for a photograph is limited solely to the photographer’s selection and arrangement of unprotected elements or rather that such protection also covers elements of the photograph that express original creative judgments of the photographer. At issue in this case is an iconic image of basketball superstar Michael Jordan captured by Rentmeester in a 1984 photograph shot for LIFE Magazine. The image, which features Jordan mid-air and flying towards a basketball hoop with his left arm and both legs outstretched, was ranked by TIME Magazine as one of the most influential images of all time.

This case stems back to a complaint filed by Zuma Press in August 2016, a few months after Getty displayed and offered thousands of images for commercial use that were credited to Les Walker. However, the 47,048 images making up that collection were either once owned or licensed by Zuma. Zuma requested that Getty take down the images in May and Getty complied after having earned less than $100 in total revenues for those pictures. In its lawsuit, Zuma and the other plaintiffs alleged that had committed copyright infringement and violated the integrity of copyright management information under Section 1202 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) for intentionally altering the copyright attribution information embedded in those images.

U.S. District Judge Stephen V. Wilson of the Central District of California recently issued an order granting-in-part and denying-in-part a motion for summary judgment made by Detroit, MI-based automaker General Motors in a copyright case brought by a Swedish artist who painted a street mural which GM used in its marketing materials. Although Judge Wilson granted summary judgment in favor of GM on the plaintiff’s Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) and punitive damages claims, the artist’s claim for copyright infringement has been allowed to proceed to trial.

U.S. District Judge Paul Engelmayer of the Southern District of New York recently entered an opinion and order in a copyright case involving the famed “Last Sitting” photographs of American movie star Marilyn Monroe. Although the case will continue to proceed towards a trial, Judge Engelmayer resolved various issues in the case including a determination that the owner of the copyrights to the Last Sitting photographs is the trust of the now-deceased photographer who took the photos and not Condé Nast, the publisher of the magazine Vogue where the photographs first appeared in 1962.

Today, as social media becomes more essential for businesses, there will almost certainly be an increase in intellectual property disputes about social media account ownership. Lawsuits relating to Twitter followers, LinkedIn connections, or Facebook friends are not off limits. These intangible assets — social media IP assets — are becoming increasingly more valuable to businesses… According to Ball, companies should be clear about who owns a social media account and what an employee can do with the account… Sarfati says that employers also need to recognize that social media is not just one thing – but rather a grouping of various websites that represent unique threats and opportunities to the employer’s bottom line.

With new social media platforms and photo sharing apps becoming more and more popular, the risk of copyright infringement through the sharing of photos is more present now than ever before. Not to mention, many social media platforms give the ability to re-post, save or share other people’s content. When so many options are available, allowing you to share someone’s photo at the click of a button, it is easy to forget about the possible legal implications of what you do on social media.

There is no question that smart phones have transformed the social and economic structure of society, and the integration of increasingly effective cameras has helped spark the revolution.  It is now the norm for people to document their lives through images of themselves and those around them, and to share those images through social media, where others then copy, edit, and reuse them within the blink of an eye.  Just imagine all the ways that photos are now taken, posted and virally spread via social media.  For instance, I have taken selfies, asked strangers to take pictures of me with my hiking buddies, and asked friends to send me images of people from their camera rolls. I have taken photographs of well-known personalities at private gatherings, and snapped pictures of individuals when they had no idea I was even there.   Sometimes I decide to post these personal images on Instagram or Facebook, and then away they go… Unfortunately, the Ninth Circuit failed in T3Media to fully and accurately address the limits of copyright preemption on state law claims involving the personal rights of individuals appearing in photographs.

Businesses were recently given a harsh reminder about the effects of failing to obtain permissions when using photography for commercial purposes when a California woman sued Chipotle earlier this year for $2.2 billion. According to the complaint in the Chipotle case, in 2006, a photographer approached the plaintiff outside of a Chipotle restaurant and asked her to sign a consent form about some photographs taken inside the restaurant. The woman refused, but in 2014 and 2015, she found a photograph of herself edited into promotional materials placed on the walls of several Chipotle restaurants in California and Florida. This case serves as a reminder that any business that uses a person’s image for commercial purposes must first obtain that person’s consent.

Google, the Internet software and services arm of Alphabet Inc. (NASDAG:GOOGL), offers a tremendously valuable portal to the wider Internet through its flagship search engine service. One of the more popular aspects of Google’s search engine is the image search features; as of July 2010, Google’s image search was delivering one billion pageviews per day to the company and 10…

The Polaroid-Kodak dispute involved patents covering instant photography, which at the time was among the most valuable technologies. It was the case that launched 10,000 patent suits, many by non-practicing entities. But as one observer pointed out, by the end of the long dispute, the Polaroid-Kodak battle was “little more than two aging giants dueling on the decks of the Titanic.” Digital photography would soon eclipse instant photography, and both litigants were on the road to insolvency.