A major Chinese photo agency is demanding an astrophotographer pay $12,000 to use his own photos after he posted his work to social media platform Weibo. The photographer says he never licensed his photos to the agency.
Apple is reportedly flexing its legal muscle in several countries around the world in order to secure intellectual property rights to images of actual apples, the kind that you eat.
Canon successfully saw the removal of over 1,500 Amazon listings of third-party printer toner from vendors that it believed infringed on its patents as part of an aggressive campaign to protect its intellectual property.
Reality TV star Bethenny Frankel has been sued for copyright infringement after allegedly posting an image of storm-ravaged Puerto Rico on her Instagram account without permission from the photographer.
Senator Josh Hawley has introduced a bill that would cap copyright on intellectual property to a maximum of 56 years, with no extensions. If passed, the bill would also retroactively apply to existing copyrights.
If you're a family photographer preparing for the holiday season, a word to the wise: don't offer Grinch-themed photo shoots. After a photographer's holiday photo shoot went viral—with coverage in People, TODAY, Pop Sugar and more—Dr. Seuss Enterprises purportedly went on the offensive, sending an aggressive cease and desist letter that has since spread like wildfire across social media.
Fujifilm has filed a legal complaint in the US, accusing Polaroid of turning against the company and demanding millions of dollars in royalty payments per year for the use of its white borders on its new Instax Square instant film. Polaroid is allegedly threatening Fujifilm with a trademark lawsuit if it doesn't comply.
I've been wrestling with this for a while now. I wasn't going to write a post like this but things have reached a certain point where I don't feel I can take anything on any further, so for now a little social media post will have to suffice in lieu of actual justice.
When it comes to filing and obtaining patents from the US government, no Japanese company is as active as Canon. For the 10th straight year, Canon has ranked 1st among all Japanese companies in terms of patents awarded. Its 4,055 patents from 2014 also ranks Canon 3rd overall among all companies.
Want to learn the basics of US copyright law without having to spend eons going through imageless websites and backbreaking textbooks? Check out Bound by Law. It's a comic book that translates abstract and confusing copyright laws into easy to understand "visual metaphors."
By the time you're through with the 72-page comic, you'll know quite a bit about the basics of copyright law, including fair use, infringement, and public domain.
Well this is awkward... We're all for people advocating for copyright law and making sure that people at least understand that it's bad to steal other people's intellectual property, but if you're going to do it, you might want to follow your own rules.
Case in point: Anti-piracy group The Business Software Alliance was called out this weekend for allegedly using a stolen photo in an anti-piracy ad that encouraged people to turn in unlicensed software users.
It's rare that we get to report happy news from the intellectual property side of the photography business, so let's take heart from a win-win settlement achieved between a wronged photographer and viral media site BuzzFeed.
A French court has banned distribution of a photo book and fined the photographer, essentially for including a portrait the subject didn't like.
Canipre -- short for Canadian Intellectual Property Rights Enforcement -- is a Canadian anti-piracy company that has joined hand-in-hand with film studios and record companies to track down those who steal and share stolen content over the internet. On the surface there's nothing wrong with this, what is wrong is when an intellectual property advocate is found using photos without permission, which is exactly what happened to Canipre a couple of days ago.
The issue of publishing social media photos of breaking news without their owners' permission is in the news again. After a helicopter crashed in central London last Wednesday, the London Evening Standard found a photo snapped by a witness named Craig Jenner and shared on Twitter. Unable to obtain permission from Jenner prior to its paper going to the press, the Evening Standard went ahead and published the image on its front page.
One chapter in the saga of Kodak's escape from bankruptcy has come to an end. The company announced today that it has completed the sale of its valuable imaging patents for $525 million to a group of Silicon Valley companies. The deal involves more than 1,100 patents related to the capturing, manipulating, and sharing of digital photographs.
Perhaps lost amidst the excitement over new cameras at CES 2012 earlier this month was the SD Association’s unveiling …
At what point does inspiration turn into plagiarism? That's the question that popped up last year when Rhianna was sued by David LaChapelle over scenes found in one of her music videos, and it's the same issue with a lawsuit recently filed by photographer Janine Gordon against photographer Ryan McGinley. Gordon claims that 150 of McGinley's images -- including some used for a Levi's ad campaign -- are "substantially based" on her photos. In the three pairs of disputed images shown above, the ones on the left are by Gordon and the ones on the right by McGinley.
A Texas-based photographer named David Langford received quite a surprise earlier this year when his friend tipped him off …