Brian Maack vs Desmond Howard and others

Brian Maack shot a picture of Desmond after a touchdown reception, as Desmond struck the Heisman Trophy Pose....

After quite a few years Brian is bringing a lawsuit against Desmond and several other media outlets and publications for unauthorized use. SI magazine paid $500 and provided a credit to him upon the initial publication back in 91 (?) but the lawsuit addresses other uses including Nissan who used it as a background in an ad....

Any comments on this? I'm just bringing it up to discuss copyrighting images. Do photographers need to submit images if they plan to bave them purchased for one time use or just general protection? What's it cost to copyright a photo with tbe copyright office?

About $35 and you can submit an unlimited number of pics at a time.

If you want to be protected from illegal use, you need to submit everything.

Brian owns the copyright to the photo as part of the assignment he did for SI. SI published the pictures per their contract with Brian. Other people including magazines, Nissan, and Desmond himself have published the photo without licensing the image from Brian-a clear copyright violation. There is no good reason that they could not have paid a licensing fee for use or just not used the image. Brian probably did try to negotiate reasonable fees and failed before bringing this lawsuit. The copyright system protects all of our images against unauthorized use, and this is the consequence.

Copyright infringement lawsuits are federal cases that can only be initiated if the copyright registration was obtained for the images. A group of images can be registered for $35. No photographer is required to register images, but the legal advantages and damage recovery is higher for registered images.

-Scott

http://www.copyright.g​ov/fls/fl107.html

sspellman wrote in post #15714031
Brian owns the copyright to the photo as part of the assignment he did for SI. SI published the pictures per their contract with Brian. Other people including magazines, Nissan, and Desmond himself have published the photo without licensing the image from Brian-a clear copyright violation. There is no good reason that they could not have paid a licensing fee for use or just not used the image. Brian probably did try to negotiate reasonable fees and failed before bringing this lawsuit. The copyright system protects all of our images against unauthorized use, and this is the consequence.

Copyright infringement lawsuits are federal cases that can only be initiated if the copyright registration was obtained for the images. A group of images can be registered for $35. No photographer is required to register images, but the legal advantages and damage recovery is higher for registered images.

-Scott

http://www.copyright.g​ov/fls/fl107.html

Yeah I was sort of thinking this.... read an article in the Freep from a couple of days ago......

Thanks

Actually, according to his complaint here: http://digitalcommons.​law.scu.edu …e=1256&context=​historical

He shot the game freelance with no specific client. The then sent a plate to SI for them to run which did not get returned.

From there, only God knows what happened. But it looks like there may have been some passing around.

sspellman wrote in post #15714031
Brian owns the copyright to the photo as part of the assignment he did for SI. SI published the pictures per their contract with Brian. Other people including magazines, Nissan, and Desmond himself have published the photo without licensing the image from Brian-a clear copyright violation. There is no good reason that they could not have paid a licensing fee for use or just not used the image. Brian probably did try to negotiate reasonable fees and failed before bringing this lawsuit. The copyright system protects all of our images against unauthorized use, and this is the consequence.

Copyright infringement lawsuits are federal cases that can only be initiated if the copyright registration was obtained for the images. A group of images can be registered for $35. No photographer is required to register images, but the legal advantages and damage recovery is higher for registered images.

-Scott

http://www.copyright.g​ov/fls/fl107.html