Photography infringement is rampant and financially damages intellectual property holders big and small. While bloggers and cyberbullies will make light of it and go so far as to blame the photographer/intellectual property holder himself/herself, the fact remains that copying photographs found on the internet (unless you are specifically authorized to do so) is against the law and constitutes infringement.
In the age of digitalization, it is simpler than ever for individuals to facilitate the unauthorized use of copyrighted photos. The copy/paste mentality that has permeated the Internet may seem innocuous to most people, but it is an action that has the ability to damage the reputation and pocketbook of innocent photographers.
If you are a photographer and your intellectual property is stolen and utilized without your permission, it can be tremendously aggravating. Many people, of course, utilize the photos of other people despite knowing what they are doing is completely unlawful. It is the responsibility of the photographer, as a professional, to go extra miles to protect the rights to photographs through formal federally protected copyrights.
A person or company who unlawfully uses copyrighted photographs for commercial purposes commits an act of infringement. When photographers are forced to protect their intellectual property from improper use, cyberbullies are quick to persecute them online through various methods, to dissuade them from protecting their statutory rights.
Prepared Food Photos, Inc. was subjected to the many forms of cyberbullying when it began to exercise its statutory rights to prevent the unlicensed use of its professional food photographs that are published through the official website of the company.
Prepared Food Photos has been creating professional food photography for more than 40 years. The company offers an unrivaled subscription service that includes tens of thousands of high-resolution photographs of different types of prepared food. The founding principles of PreparedFoodPhotos.com were built on the conviction that ‘innovative food photography is a tremendous way to brand a business’.
Using an internet platform to license professionally created photographs provides those food retailers with the greatest potential for financial success. This is why PreparedFoodPhotos.com is a specialty product for supermarkets, grocery wholesalers and ad agencies, and not the smaller business or individual. The Preparedfoodphotos.com platform contains fully licensed images of a wide variety of foods and stylized shots.
PreparedFoodPhotos.com loses an estimated 75% of annual sales to stolen images. To fight this photography infringement battle, the company has been forced to retain various law firms over the years to make a dent in an otherwise insurmountable task of chasing down thousands of infringers. For the last 1.5 years, Prepared Food Photos has been working with the attorneys at CopyCat Legal (an intellectual property law firm headquartered in South Florida) to protect Prepared Food Photos’ valuable copyrighted content. With the help of CopyCat Legal, the company is starting to see a difference being made in infringers being dissuaded from continuing their financial harm against the company.
Prepared Food Photos and CopyCat Legal share a common goal – to protect the interests, intellectual property, and livelihoods of the contributors with whom they work. Dealing with copyright infringement may be an extremely stressful and draining task. It’s common for photographers to face resistance from unauthorized users when they try to enforce their rights. What becomes worse is when cyberbullies attack the photographer or the law firms representing their rights. The United States Library of Congress affords photographers this protection through the copyright system. A system that has proven again and again to protect valuable intellectual property.
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