Copyright Aid

You are perfecly entitled to ask for a breakdown of the £660 and for proof of copyright ownership etc. Unless the photographer was an employee of Reuters at the time the photograph was taken, it is unlikely that they are the owners of the rights in it, unless the photographer has assigned the full c...

Hi again, Both PicRights and you know that £660 is a ridiculously inflated figure. They have to make money from their dubious business model and at the same time make money for their clients Reuters, and ultimately, the copyright owner who is the photographer. The civil law system is only interested...

Hi jblake and welcome, I don't think a specific list of do's and don't's is really possible as each case wlll have slightly different circumstances. Probably the only 'don't' I would recommend is 'Don't admit liability'. While you may think that you are in the wrong, there may be extenuating factors...

Hi jblake and welcome. It's not quite that simple. As long as the infringement continues, the tort is actionable, so the Limitation Act doesn't kick in. However the case above is different in that the copyright owner appears to have known about the use of the images (which he maintains is without a ...

Hi Finelight and welcome to the forum, There are several things to look at here. The first is that, based on what you have said, it is fairly clear there was an implied licence for you to use the images without payment. The primary evidence for this is the email he sent to the events company enclosi...

Provided that your account is with PayPal UK Ltd then you have a degree of protection from any court order which the Illinois court might make to seize your assets, assuming that the law firm carry out their threat and pursue the matter to a judgmernt. A UK business or bank is not obliged to comply ...

Hi LauraAshley1 and welcome to the forums. From your description of your artwork, it doesn't sound as if there are any grounds for alleging trade mark infringement. To qualify as infringement the 'mark' (in this case your piece of art) would need to have been used in the course of trade in a way whi...

Hi Cathy, I think you have covered all the issues well. I hope it does the trick. Be prepared for them to come back with a refusal and despite intimating that they will be forced to hand the matter over to their solicitors, in fact things will go quiet for a bit. The aim of this tactic, I suggest, i...

Hi Cathy, Unless the image you used was very specific to the astronomical event you referenced in your blog, then I would be inclined to use any other suitable image licence that you can find on a stock site as the yardstick for the markect value of the comparable licnece. The courts recognise somet...

Hi Cathy and welome to the forums. You are entirely correct that the figure of £510 is both excessive and wholly unreasonable. The actual amount of any damages a court would award is the actual true market value of a licence which you would have bought at the time when you first needed the image. Si...

Thanks Steve

If you look back to page one of this thread I explained the difference between infringement by copying and infringement of moral rights. Both can lead to damages, but the way the damages are calculated in each instance is different. I can't see how any claim against you for copying can get past the ...

Thanks for the update.

Yes while the laws vary from country to country, there are international agreements which govern how copyright protection is enforced between states. Generally the place where a work is first published will determine the term of protection, but obviously in your case that doesn't help as the diaries...

Hi Kendal and welcome to the forums, Since this author was living in London (and irrespective of her actual nationality) the applicable law will be that of the UK. However if you were to publish the diaries while you are in the Netherlands you may also need to, briefly, consider Dutch / EU law, in c...