Clause 1.1
1.1 License Grant to Getty Images: You grant Getty Images a worldwide, exclusive right to market and sublicense the right to copy, reproduce, display, transmit, broadcast, modify, alter, create derivative works of and publish the whole or part of any Content (as defined below) that you submit to Getty Images.
I agree with S.G. This would seem to me to be about as close to the transfer of an "exclusive license" as we are going to get. The document isn't signed by either party, and it doesn't mention any specific images.
The fact that the document isn't signed seemed to be of importance to the judge in the Advernet case, but he didn't use this reason alone to rule that Getty had not proved ownership of the exclusive license for 27 of the images.
Wojtczak testified that the Getty Images Contributor Agreement did “not have signatures. It is a digitally accepted agreement. The contributor signed via our online contributor contract portal.” The following ensued:
THE COURT: And where, if anywhere, does a representative form Getty execute, sign the document, digitally or otherwise?
THE WITNESS: You know, I'm not entirely familiar with where in the process that happens. All I know is the contributor agrees to the terms at the time of submission, and from that moment the contract becomes viewable as that contributor having a revised agreement, essentially. Any contributor that has not entered into the newer Getty Images contributor agreement as of yet, when viewing their information, when I went in to look for their contract, I could tell who—who had executed and who had not, but I am not familiar with the process in terms of the actual execution.
THE COURT: So you don't know if Getty representative executed the contributor agreement that is part of Exhibit 4 that you were discussing with me.
In light of the foregoing analysis of the plaintiff's claim that the images at issue are licensed exclusively to it, the Court finds that material issues of fact exist with respect to the plaintiff's copyright ownership interest in twenty-seven of the images at issue, as discussed above.
The fact that no specific image title is mentioned seems important to me. For example. if a photographer has 10,000 images in his entire collection, and has transferred only 1,000 of these images to Getty, what would there be to stop Getty from claiming the exclusive license for all the photographer's images? After all, the above agreement doesn't differentiate between or list specific images. Getty could claim to own the exclusive license of an image for which the photographer had transferred the exclusive license to another stock company.
Wouldn't the transfer of an exclusive worldwide license for a specific image have to include the identification ( title ) of that spefific image? After all, Getty uses these contracts to prove ownership of an exclusive license to specific images. If anyone is interested, I have a dozen or so real examples of these contracts ( sent by Getty to Marot Image). The name of the photographer is printed.
It's worth comparing the above contract with the form recommended by the copyright office for registering a copyright in the visual arts
http://www.copyright.gov/forms/formgr_va.pdfIt contains details such as the title of work, the date of creation, etc. These details are not included in the Getty contract.
Topic: GETTY IMAGES CONTRIBUTOR AGREEMENT (Read 15281 times)