A question regarding Exclusive/Non-Exclusive Rights

Hi All,

I am not sure if this has already been covered so apologies if I am asking you to cover ground you already have. But I am panicking at present over a deal I have going and need to sort it urgently.

Recently I took a very striking photo of a cat. I sent it into a pet magazine here in New Zealand. They have asked to purchase for their cover , for a relatively small fee (although at the 'going rate' from what I hear from others). I agreed to allow them a non-exclusive one-off use - I retain the rights etc etc.

Now, I believe that I can get a lot financially out of this image, I believe it so much that I am willing to attempt to sell at a high price with full rights surrendered to the buyer.

The question I have is this;

Now that I have sold the image to the magazine people (for a one-off use only), can I then say to another buyer that they get full ownership rights except for the one off use by the magazine? In other words, they get full rights to the image from now on. Is there any legal reason why an agreement such as that cannot be made?

I just want to make sure that if I sold the rights to the image, that the buyer wouldn't have any come back to say "hey you sold us the rights to this image but a magazine used it".

I think the answer is that I can do business this way (provided the new buyer understands that the image will be used in a one-off situation by someone else first). But I just wanted to run it by all of you here first.

Any advice would be gratefully appreciated.

Thanks,

Cliff

I've kinda had this happen before, since you own the image and sold it prior to them wanting it they can't do nothing about it. I had one guy want to buy an image of mine that was used in magazines, on baseball cards, etc. Now that magazine or card company could use the pic 10 years down the line, they already were granted permission before I would have sold it to that guy. I told him the companies that already had the image and said they might use them again, just letting him know. The guy just wanted to make sure noone else would get it from there on. So, assuming since they wanted it after you already gave it to others they cant say those companies cant use it. (BTW, I didnt sell the image to that guy, he wouldnt leave me alone, called 10-15 in an hour all day long and left message after message, on top of an hourly or more rate of emails. I finally told him no and going to press harrassment charges on him because of the comments in his messages....ah good times)

You really need to consult an attorney on this one.

"I retain the rights etc", so I don't see a problem, but in NZ? I can't really say.

If you believe it can make lots of money why are you willing to allow a buyout? I hope your buyout price is huge...