Creative Leisure News

Answers to your troubling and tricky legal questions.

Photographs and Copyrights

When and how can you use a photo taken by someone else?

By Eva-Marie Boyd (August 16, 2004)

(Note: Last month Eva-Marie described her craft client's problem with the Internet giant, Google. Here's the background � and then the conclusion.

Eva-Marie has been a practicing attorney for approximately 15 years. During that time she has been President of the Orange County Barristers, President of her law school alumni association, served on the Orange County Bar Association Board of Directors for seven years and as chair of the Orange County Bar Association Legal Referral Committee for three years. She was a panel attorney for California Lawyer for the Arts and has lectured for that organization on copyright issues.)

Note: We've received a number of questions and comments about photographs. Web surfers can copy copyrighted photos they find on the Internet by right-clicking on the photo and saving it. Consumers have been known to use copyrighted photos in their scrapbooks, but then submit the pages to scrapbook magazines who publish the pages � and copyright the content of their issues.

Q. When may someone other than the actual photographer use a photograph?

A. Here I must give me usual answer:" "That depends."

My husband and I had a personal experience with that particular scenario just recently. His mother passed away and we called the newspaper where she had lived to have the paper write one of the "article" type of obituaries.

The writer did his research and wrote a beautiful article. He even included a photograph we hadn't seen before from the newspaper's archives that had appeared in the paper in 1953.

We called, thanked him and asked if we could get a copy of the photograph. He answered no because the photograph had been copyrighted. Keep in mind this is a photograph of my husband's Mother. Still, no go.

In an attempt to answer the question, the safest was is to get permission. What a pain. You can use photos or images that are so old that they have fallen into the public domain.

Are you sure the photograph is, in fact, a photograph or just some form of digital rendering? This being the case, the image must be one to which to which the copyright office would give its blessing; in other words the image has enough creativity and originality to warrant a copyright.

To respond to "The Right-Click Bandits" The scrapbooking site that right-clicked the layout of another site, needs to be sent a cease and desist letter or be sued for Unfair Business Practices.

Also, just because an image has the copyright sign does not necessarily mean the copyright office would determine that the image, layout, etc. is in fact copyright-able.

The term-paper clickers need to be flunked for plagiarism. My son is an English teacher and he has often called students on this practice, because the work submitted did not comport with their previous writings and/or he was able to find the writing on the Internet himself.

(Note: Have any questions regarding copyrights, trademarks, or other business-related legal issues? Your name will not be used. Mail, fax, or email your questions to Eva-Marie Boyd, 1160 Catalina St., Laguna Beach, CA 92651 fax: 949-497-3148; email lawddaw@aol.com. To read previous Legal Q. & A. columns, click on the titles in the right-hand column.)