Legal Question in Intellectual Property in Illinois

I contracted a photography company for my wedding and gave THAT company rights to use my pictures for minimal marketing/advertising purposes. I have found that one of the photographers from the company I contracted has now started his own business and is using my wedding photographs for his marketing purposes without my permission. I want to know if this is legal and what steps I can take to have the pictures taken down. There are also pictures from my wedding on this new website that I have never seen before nor do I have a copy of.

Where do I go from here? Please let me know if more information is required.


Asked on 2/19/10, 6:40 am

1 Answer from Attorneys
Stephen Messutta

1. Copyright.... If you signed a release it may allow the company to assign its rights to a third person, presumably the photographer you're talking about. The key is "minimal". But you'd have to review the release you gave away.

2. Pictures you've never seen before? If you paid money and they didn't share images with you, they may have breached their contract with you and you should take the reprint to them and demand to know where all of the images are. You may need to review the contract -- but even if it gave them permission to withhold images that they felt in their artistic judgment were not representative of the quality of work they normally intend -- they're using them, so they should share them with you!!!

We can not review legal documents on this site. If you are not comfortable reviewing them yourself, you may need to have them reviewed by an attorney.

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Answered on 2/24/10, 9:40 am


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