Copyright question

[Martyn Heath]

Im no expert but i cant see it being a problem.
The manufacture would surely be happy for the free advertising, and as the shop is selling their products you normally get rights to use images etc. Same as if they were selling them on a website.

Sure someone will know the legal side better tho

[Iain George]

I am a member on another site and this always crops up. What seems to be the general consensus is that who are we to police the legality of what we print. If you were printing Star Wars images to sell for your own gain then yes you will be in trouble but a customer asks you to print Star Wars images for there shop which sell Star Wars products, then you have to take the line that they have permission from Lucas/Disney to promote their products.

[Robert Neill]

So maybe I should get it in writing from them to say that they have asked me to print it… would that work ?

[Martyn Heath]

Yes thats the route i would go down just to cover yourself if the worst was to happen. But personally i dont see you having any problems. Much bigger things going on in the world atm 🙂

[Robert Neill]

Ye there sure is. Thanks Martyn [emoji106]

[Peter Johnson]

As far as I am aware, if you didn’t take the picture, then you have no legal right to use it without permission from whoever did.

It’s as simple as that.

However, if you print a picture for your own personal use and don’t use it for advertising yourself, or your business, in any way, then it’s okay. You can do the same for another person, but strictly for personal use. And this means no displaying in a public place.

Technically, even a main distributor, or main dealer (BMW, Audi, Starbucks etc) have to have permission from their respective suppliers.

I have seen garages that service a variety of cars have their advertising taken down because they never asked for permission to use the logos.

In your case, you need to clearly state that you do not have a licence to print said images for commercial use and that, while you can print the images for them, you take no responsibility in how they use them and that it is up to them to gain said permissions before using them commercially. And make them sign something that says they understand this. Oh, and don’t put them up either.

And you can’t get around it by taking your own picture of a particular logo and claiming copyright on that. The logo still belongs to the company it represents.

[David Rogers]

This topic comes up every now and again. In its simplest form, copyright is copyright…unauthorised use or abuse of somebody else’s imagery is theft regardless of having the consent of a third party.
In practice there won’t be a signmaker or designer that hasn’t went on Google and grabbed an image or two or went to ‘BOTW’ for a company logo and ticked the box to agree to the unauthorised use disclaimer.
Does a major car brand want to be associated with a pokey little back-street garage? Did coke really give approval to put a picture of a can on a burger van? Did little Jimmy’s mum and dad get Marvel to sign off on the Iron Man banner for his birthday banner? We all know the answers, and you having a signed bit of paper is acknowledging the issues of unauthorised use and sort of approving them.

There’s a thread on unauthorised use of images by one company passing off as their work / gaining financial advantage through someone else’s imagery…looks like one of the forum members will be successful in defending his property…the other side of the argument.

Dave

[David Hammond]

It me who’s now sat in London ahead of our hearing on Monday about the misuse of one of our images.

As Dave says, we’ve likely all done it, our T&C’s cover this, should a brand come after us, the client is liable for damages etc.

Ignorance is no excuse.