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understanding copyright of picture i took of my husbands landrover


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Hi, I hope someone can help me here, i have taken thousands of photographs over the last 40 years and am just very slowly starting to put them on Alamy. I really want to share my images with the world, started my love of photography seeing an image appear on paper in the developer tray many decades ago! ie 35mm printing my own b&w images. It would be nice to earn money from this but it isn't my number 1 goal in life re my art. 

I have always been careful never to take pictures of someone or someones property, if they didn't want me to, asking if it is ok at the time for instance, but i have taken pictures of things me and my family own, thinking we paid for it so is ok, for instance our 1980 landrover defender 90 on holiday after we'd given it a good clean, and people in public, for instance playing tennis at Wimbledon or on stage.

 

Sorry this is long hoping someone can help me. 

 

Hope it's alright to word my question with the following words:- 
I have tens of thousands of photographs I'd like to upload to Alamy,  obviously dont want to break any laws etc, i have pictures on a redbubble site, where, if I sell an image as a greetings card, for instance, i earn 60 pence, (nothing really -redbubble earn far more than me in reality & for years ive wondered if its worth selling my pictures this way, earn nowt & some of my pics not the best quality wise). So i am obviously leading to a question re a picture i love of my husbands landrover defender 90, which we had spent lots of money and time on, and taken pictures of on holiday, like many people i am sure have done, I see thousands of pictures on internet of peoples own cars in variety of settings. 

 The only way to ask is to say what happened so again i say i dont wish to offend any company etc... I had an email from redbubble saying they had removed one of my images with a landrover in, due to copyright claim from jaguar landrover. There are many thousands of pictures of landrovers on redbubble, flikr....  the internet in general so i felt shock, like im being picked on by a big company (note, pic is of my husbands landrover defender 90 of many years ago in a pretty landscape, my husband said....thats my car before jaguar even owned landrover). Is it because the image was for sale on goods redbubble sells? In which case how come jaguar landrover haven't put a claim in on all the images on redbubble? Mine was in a landscape, not even the main subject. As i used it really for perspective, there are many of the same car (& other brands of cars) without any background whatsoever for sale on redbubble. Feel like deleting my redbubble account as dont make any money anyway & im too old for the stress, made only £8 in over 7 years in total for all my photographic images being sold as cards or pictures, so nothing really. I'm sure someone here will know what is isn't allowed. 

 

There are thousands of pictures of landrovers on the internet, am i allowed to put any of my photographs online as long as they aren't for sale? (though now im tempted to remove every picture, even if our landrover is a teeny part of the pic as i see it as landrover getting free advertising my saying how brilliant our car was in the hills but im starting to not like them, (hope im allowed to say how i feel, i am simply a "poor" artist). As you know without my copyright sign over images, anyone could print my pics if they wanted to.

Thanks, greatly appreciate help from anyone who can help with this copyright question. (note these are photos taken by me of our car)

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Your Landrover images can be put up on Alamy provided they are RM (not RF) and Editorial Use Only. You own the Landrover, not it’s brand! People, wrongly, post all sorts of branded items with little regard, best to be safe.

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Grace, I looked at one of your images with caption "Red Arrows".  Given your caption and keywords for this High ISO image, I would say there is no hope of any interested buyer ever finding this image.  Setting images as RM will solve your worries about copyright, but you need to up your game in annotating your images.

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I'd second what Reimar just said. You have some very nice images there but you need a lot of work on the captions and tags.

Several have the caption 'Olympus Digital Camera'.

To sell, your photos have to be good but they also have to be found. If they don't have a carefully worked caption and relevant keywords nobody will every get to see them, never mind buy them, which would be a shame.

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Grace, you can put your Landrover pics up on Alamy. You don't have to make them "editorial use only", it'll be enough to say that you don't have a Property Release - as Landrover hold the Copyright to the design". 

 

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5 hours ago, vpics said:

You don't have to make them "editorial use only", it'll be enough to say that you don't have a Property Release

 

 

If you don't mark the images as "editorial use only", then they would be available as commercial. Though if that's the case, wouldn't Alamy, the photographer and the client who purchases the license receive legal action from Land Rover? I'm not sure if Land Rover would be happy about one of their cars being used to promote a product or service without a property release - in other words without their permission. Correct me if I'm wrong. Unless it's up to the client to organise a property release? I come from the world of microstock so I don't know all the finer details of midstock.

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Grace, not being rude, but that was a very long-winded way to ask a simple question! ;) :) So now for a very long-winded answer! :D

 

As others have said, yes, you can happily sell your Land Rover pictures here on Alamy as editorial images (RM). You don't have to mark them as editorial only (but you can do if it will make you feel more comfortable and will not hurt either way), just ensure, as has been said, that you mark them down as not having a property release. No commercial buyer in their right mind would dare use such an image as they would risk having the pants sued off them by LR! And you would also be at risk. 

 

Which relates to Redbubble: as a commercial option for you, you have clearly gathered that it is a total waste of time. As for LR picking on you, well they aren't, they just happen to have found your image and are using it as an example to warn Redbubble (and you), that selling images of their brand is an infringement of their trademark and copyright which they will - quite rightly - pursue with vigour should it persist. Redbubble, as a vendor, is selling images commercially you see. Despite the fact that you only make pennies out if a sale, the image of their product is being used to sell another product (postcard, print, whatever), not for editorial purposes. Redbubble will argue that it is up to the individual to ensure that they own the copyright in anything and everything contained within any uploaded images and by uploading there you will have agreed to abide by this contract that you have with them. Read their terms and conditions which you are, by law, deemed to have signed. 

 

Phew! In short:

  • Ditch Redbubble
  • Be very careful of anything you upload to any POD (print on demand) sites
  • Upload your images here - clearly marked as either editorial only or has having no property release. 

Good luck! 

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Excellent response from losdemas with just the right amount of clarity with brevity. For what it's worth, I always mark any photos containing people or property (which is nearly all of them) as 'Editorial Only', so it's quite clear to any would-be purchaser that they cannot license them for commercial usage. 

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6 hours ago, Patrick Cooper said:

 

If you don't mark the images as "editorial use only", then they would be available as commercial. Though if that's the case, wouldn't Alamy, the photographer and the client who purchases the license receive legal action from Land Rover?

My understanding is that if we annotate our images correctly we're not liable. Likewise Alamy. The publisher might be. The scope for legal action is very limited anyway. The only English case seems to have been one for passing-off. In the US, who knows, it's a participant sport.

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