The owner of copyright in a photo has successfully sued a web site operator where that operator used the photo without the copyright owner’s permission. This was despite the web site operator not realising that it did not have permission to use the photo. It had thought that the person who had supplied the photo (the model) had the necessary permission. However, ignorance of the reality was no defence, the Patents County Court said. Infringing copyright was a strict liability offence and no knowledge or suspicion of infringement needed to be proven. The damages were uplifted for the change to the photo by cropping the photo and removing the background, which distortion the Court agreed had amounted to derogatory treatment.
Paul Gershlick, a Partner at Matthew Arnold & Baldwin LLP, comments: “This is not new law. But it should serve as a warning to web site owners. They are fully liable if they infringe the copyright by putting any material on their web sites. It is no excuse just to say that the web developer had been responsible or that they thought the supplier had permission. The web site owner should therefore carry out appropriate checks, and also obtain indemnities from the person who gives them the material.”