allymac123
Prominent Member
Got back from a lecture this morning to find a leaflet on the door matt promoting student accomodation. Nothing unusual there.
However as we were having a quick glance over the leaflet I noticed that on the front cover was a picture that looked earily similar to mine. It was mine.
Disgusted at this I went on their website to discover that my image had been used as a banner image to all of their website.
Went to the Citizen's advice bureau who were quite frankly usless and just printed off an article on copyright infringment for me. No advice to speak of really.
So I popped into a nearby solicitors who said that Intellectual property lawers were usually very very expensive and that my best bet would be to phone up the company directly and ask them to immediately cease using the image or if they wanted to carry on using it pay me a fee.
I wasn't too happy with that idea as there is no way the company is getting to not pay for my image which has been used in a leaflet and on the website. It may well have been used in other publications by them aswell.
It does seem that my first course of action should be to phone them up and quote them my fee's which would be based on double the one quoted on the NUJ freelance fee's guide.
I was just wandering if people generally agree that is the best thing to do and any other idea's/what to say etc.
I'm a bit reluctant to post up the business that has does this just incase any forum 'guests' contact them or anything like that (i'm sure it wouldn't happen but this is a public forum at the end of the day).
As for the photo I think they probably got it from the university of Lincoln portal where I uploaded it months ago or from my flickr.
here's the shot
Thanks
EDIT I've added some more info and a slight 'twist'. Sorry should have been a bit clearer from the start.
Look Here
However as we were having a quick glance over the leaflet I noticed that on the front cover was a picture that looked earily similar to mine. It was mine.
Disgusted at this I went on their website to discover that my image had been used as a banner image to all of their website.
Went to the Citizen's advice bureau who were quite frankly usless and just printed off an article on copyright infringment for me. No advice to speak of really.
So I popped into a nearby solicitors who said that Intellectual property lawers were usually very very expensive and that my best bet would be to phone up the company directly and ask them to immediately cease using the image or if they wanted to carry on using it pay me a fee.
I wasn't too happy with that idea as there is no way the company is getting to not pay for my image which has been used in a leaflet and on the website. It may well have been used in other publications by them aswell.
It does seem that my first course of action should be to phone them up and quote them my fee's which would be based on double the one quoted on the NUJ freelance fee's guide.
I was just wandering if people generally agree that is the best thing to do and any other idea's/what to say etc.
I'm a bit reluctant to post up the business that has does this just incase any forum 'guests' contact them or anything like that (i'm sure it wouldn't happen but this is a public forum at the end of the day).
As for the photo I think they probably got it from the university of Lincoln portal where I uploaded it months ago or from my flickr.
here's the shot
Thanks
EDIT I've added some more info and a slight 'twist'. Sorry should have been a bit clearer from the start.
Look Here