Noted professional photographer and expert legal witness Sedlik comments on copyright infringements.The name “Jeff Sedlik” may ring a bell to you. If not, you should know that he’s quite well known, teaches and is a professional expert legal witness in all things copyright.
Therefore, I feel that you take what he says quite seriously.
http://www.photographyexpertwitness.com/http://www.jazzandbluesmasters.com/Sedlik.htmI found some comments of his on a blog that I feel will surely be of great interest to readers of the forum:
"You may not mix published and unpublished images in the same registration, so ganging up all of your images onto a single 5 times a year is a mistake that may result in the loss of the remedies gained by registration. You must also separate your published images by year of first publication, so images published in December must be separately registered from images published in the following month."
He goes on:
"If your matter proceeds to court and does not settle, expect expenses – not including your attorney’s fees – to fall into the range of $25,000 to $250,000 or more, over a 2-5 year period of discovery, trial and appeals. There is no guarantee that you will prevail, even if you are in the right. There is no guarantee that your damages will exceed your costs or that your costs will be reimbursed, even if you have a solid copyright registration. Expect that all of your income statements, estimates, invoices and licensing records will be subpoenaed by the infringer and will be used to demonstrate the value you routinely have placed on your own work over time. Not for the weak of heart."
And:
“…if more than one image is infringed from a compilation, such as a book, calendar or website, statutory damages are limited to a single award, as if only one image had been infringed, even if thousands of images were infringed.”
Sedlik also speaks of protections for photographs and states the potential penalties that infringements can result in. I think that he’s credible, and his words have a balanced approach here.
You can read his posting on this blog (scroll down), the owner of the blog itself it quite aggressive and outspoken and I not agree with his recommended approaches:
http://www.jeremynicholl.com/blog/2011/06/13/the-10-rules-of-us-copyright-infringement/Note that Carolyn Wright chimes in, along with a not-so-subtle plug by "Copyright Services International" who gets their facts wrong and is corrected by Sedlik.
S.G.