Someone Used My Photo On Ebay

I am impressed.

This isn't a VERO case. VERO is a different animal.... deals with counterfeit Prada and stuff like that. Plus, they have too much power and tend to ignore the First Sale Doctrine sometimes. They often get things removed that are perfectly legal.

@Conder101 errs in stating




The obligation to protect a copyright lies entirely upon the owner. No member of the public has the slightest obligation to research in order to discover which of the hundreds of billions of works they come across are or are not copyrighted. If the owner doesn't by some means tell them s/he owns it, the courts will rule that the user is the innocent victim of the owner's negligence.

As to trademark management, every few years (I think it's five?) the owner of a trademark must pay a maintenance fee and prove to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office that the trademark is still in active use, else it is ruled abandoned and unenforceable. I send them a check, a website address, and a pretty brochure.

Kevin

As I recall the copyright laws, I also think Conder is correct in his general statement of the copyright law.

Kevin,

I'm not sure that is strictly correct.

If a copyright is granted upon creation, and if that copyright last for the life of the creator plus 70 years; then in a practical matter all photos produced after this date in 1950 are copyrighted and no research is needed. The assumption should always be that the image is copyrighted.

There is also a difference between "fair use" and commercial use. I used to maintain a website with obscure photographs of the town I lived in. I bought a box of negatives at a yard sale and scanned them and put them up on the website.

A cousin of the original photographer served me with a cease and desist order and attempted to find a judicial remedy.

My Girlfriend, at that time, was an attorney. She demonstrated to the Court that my use was "Fair Use"; that I was the legal owner of the negatives; and that the cousin was not the legal heir of the deceased original photographer.

At the end of the proceedings the Judge admonished me to remember that though I was the legal owner of the negatives; I only had the right to the "fair use" doctrine. That if I should ever want to include these in a commerical manner it would be advisable to track down the "heir at law" and get their written permission.

To conclude; in my experiance you CAN be sued for using someone's copyrighted image in a commerical manner.

Wikipedia lawyers had this battle long ago......

Straight up non-creative images of paper currency or a coin not listed here, it is solely a work of the United States Government, is ineligible for US copyright, and is therefore in the public domain in the United States.

Now when you add creativity like coop does, different ballgame. But a plain old image snapped of an old US coin is not eligible for copyright.

Bobby, thanks for clearing that up. As usual, you are absolutely correct. Here's an interesting discussion of the issue:

http://www.coinsoftime.com/Articles...ographs.html

I wasn't aware that photos of US coins, unlike almost all other original photographs, are not granted copyright protection at the time the image is created. That's good to know, because I often use photos from NGC or Heritage for comparison purposes or to illustrate a point. I never knew for sure whether that was acceptable, and now I know it's okay to do that.

That doesn't change my earlier point that for 99% of non-coin images, use of someone else's photo without permission is copyright infringement, regardless of whether the image is marked as being copyrighted.

I guess I'm thinking about this from the standpoint of an amateur photographer. If I post one of my photos online (e.g. nature, landscape, people, etc.), someone else is not allowed to use it or commercialize it without proper attribution and/or permission.

http://dunnerlaw.com/using-online-i...g-copyright/