[Gllug] GPL

[Martyn Drake]

Jason Clifford wrote on 21 July 2004 12:42:

> Firstly you need to understand that copyright in an original work
> exists the moment that the work is created. Providing a "copyright
> notice" is not necessary. This is under English law however it holds
> true for most legal jurisdictions too.

Indeed, as I found out about a year ago.

I was somewhat surprised to find that a London-based ISP had decided to take
a photo that was originally on our online photo gallery and had used it for
the background of an advert running in various Future Publishing and EMAP
publications without seeking permission or giving any kind of notification
beforehand.  The photos did not have any kind of watermarking or copyright
symbol on them, and thus they thought they could use them.  They had
reversed the image, but it was clearly identifiable as belonging to us. 

When I approached them asking them for a reasonable license fee for the use
of copyrighted material, they did apologise and removed the background from
all subsequent adverts.  I asked them for some form of compensation
considering they were advertising THEIR services using our photo as part of
the advert free of charge.  At this point I could no longer get through to
the MD.  

However in a letter to me shortly afterwards they had said something along
the lines of "because it was on the Internet in a freely available form, we
assumed that it could be used".  Oh such naïveté!  I explained the whole
saga to the copyright and patent office and they said that I had a good case
for suing them despite that no copyright wording was present on the
photographs or the site - as long as the work was original (which it was -
the photo in question was of tropical fish that we took whilst in a
submersible the waters of Tahiti!).  In the end they offered me 75 quid as a
"goodwill" gesture as I was a former employer of said company and that was
that - matter closed.

Regards,

	Martyn


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