Legal Question in Intellectual Property in California

Re: Who owns negatives?

The person who took the photography is the presumed author of the copyright for the photographic works, negatives and prints. This means he/she exclusively owns rights of duplication, distribution, adaption, display, transmision, etc. However, the party that purchased the photography has rights in the tangible property that was contracted. So that could be just prints or prints and negatives, depending on the terms of the verbal contract and/or any written materials provided (i.e. sales receipt?) It is important to note that the ownership of the tangible material is not the same as ownership of the copyright. For example, high end photography studios today will typically give customers prints that are contained on copyright restricted paper that does not allow third party print labs to make duplicates or resizes. This they are allowed to do because the studio owns the copyright exclusively in those works, and can restrict duplication rights for the prints by requiring that all duplicates and resizes be done directly by the entity the studio designates (most likely pursuant to a fee they collect from the customer). Finally, despite ownership of the copyright being held by the photographer in your hypothetical, it must be noted that the person(s) photographed does have privacy rights as to their image. So for instance, the copyright holder may have some restrictions as to any commercial (e.g. advertising) uses of the works that display the images of said persons.

You may check out more information on copyright law at the U.S. Copyright Office website: http://lcweb.loc.gov/copyright/. If you anticipate a dispute, I would also recommend pursuing a free consultation with an intellectual property attorney.