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Pacific Northwest Nature Photographers Tips, Tricks, Techniques & Tutorials

Copyrighting Your Images

by Mike Jordan

This is a copy of a post discussing both the importance of and the steps for copyrighting your images.

While Rick Lundh, Zack Schnepf and I were talking the subject of copyright and registering images came up. I suggested to Rick and Zack that if they hadn't registered their images they should. Especially since they both do sell them and hope to sell more. Zack made a comment that is very typical of what a lot of us think about copyright... why register if I'm already protected by copyright. That was my thoughts up till almost two years ago when I had one of my images taken off my wife's web site and used by a woman to create a large ad in a major magazine to sell very expensive dogs. Yes I was covered by copyright and yes I could have sued her over it. But because I wasn't registered, it could have cost me up to $50k if it went all the way to judgement, with no gurantee of what the judge would award me. She had a lot of money (we checked and she was worth over 4 million from only a few of the businesses she owned in Virginia Beach) and it looked like she knew that chances were I couldn't afford to sue her, so she didn't cooperate with me, even though she admitted that it wasn't her image.

And this is the big PLUS of having your images registered. One of the provisions of the copyright law is that if your images are registered and you are infringed on and win in court, besides any judgement awarded, the cost of sueing (cort and legal fees) are also passed onto the person that infringed. This is a big incentive for someone to settle before it gets to court.

The other question that many ask is how do you register and how much does it cost. It's a simple 15 minute form (less once you do the first one) that you fill out and it costs $30 for as many thumbnails (they only have to be big enough to be clearly recognized against the original if a infringement comes up) as you can get on a CD. It will take you longer to put the CD together and burn the files than it will to fill out the paperwork.

There are a couple of caviots to this. There are two catagories... published and non-published images. Non-published images can be registered anytime. Published images only have 90 days after being published (more on what published means in a minute) before you mist the special features of being registered. Also, you have to register before an infringement occurs to get the special features. So in my case I couldn't hurry up and register and then sue since they had already infringed on me.

Published images does not mean that they have been posted on a web site or seen by the public or even printed in a magazine or book. Published to the Copyright Office means having been sold, rented, leased or giving them to someone to do this for you (I'm not sure if you put them with a stock agency and the mear fact of doing that means they are published or if it's after they are sold or rented for the first time). In other words, if you do anything that is going to get you paid for them, they are considered published (but this is an area where you are going to have to talk with an IP lawyer).

Also, when you fill out the form and burn your images to a CD, you need to keep the published and non-published images seperate. With non-published you only need to send in one CD, with published images you need to send in two CDs. Registration starts the day they receive it and log it. So I send mine in with delivery conformation (no need for a signed signature) and I print off the USPS web site page that shows it was delivered and add that to my copy of the CD and form.

You can download the forms and get lots of information from the Copyright Office web site at: http://www.copyright.gov/ and if you need to ask them a question via e-mail, they are pretty quick to answer. I had answers back to my question in less than 24 hours each time. For a government agency, I was impressed.

Be sure and read the instructions on the form. You have to print it so it's on both the front and back in the right orientation. Or you can order forms from them and they are dilivered pretty quick.

So I'm a big advicate of registered anything you don't throw away. Even if you think it wouldn't be of interest to anyone else, if it's ever going to see the light of day on a web site or e-mail or anything like that, register it. You just never know what someone is going to turn into the next best selling calendar or coffee table book, note pad or sell a million of on the internet for $10 a shot. And with the work I see on this site, if you guys aren't registering your work, you aren't protecting yourself enough. If nothing else, think of it as a cheap lottery ticket that never expires.