# Using someone elses photos of a branded place?



## Flatcallbrand (Aug 17, 2011)

Not sure if my title makes sense... Basically i would like to know if anyone here has experience with the legal issues involving ecommerce site building...

Let's say you are starting an apple picking club t-shirt company and you were going to sell t-shirts online with your designs for your apple club. Now, you are making your site and you want to include some pictures on it, and you think it would be a good idea to have a slideshow of all the local applefarms in the area so people know who you are supporting... now this leads me to my question...

1) Let's say you googled these farms and found a picture of Farm A taken by Mr. X... Can you use this picture in the slideshow? If so, will Farm A or Mr. X have any legal grounds to sue you/ collect royalties?

2) How about if you are the photographer? Let's say you take a picture of Farm A, Can you use it? If so, can Farm A expect royalties?


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## charles95405 (Feb 1, 2007)

Basically the photographer owns the photo. I would suggest you not take seriously any legal suggestions on a public forum. Be safe, consult an IP attorney


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## binki (Jul 16, 2006)

If you find a pic on the internet contact the person that took it and ask for permission to use it. 

If you are going to take pics of someones property then ask for permission before you do it.


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## splathead (Dec 4, 2005)

Instead of using an obscure example of an apple farm, why don't you tell us exactly what you're planning so we can get a better grasp?

For example, if you are selling t-shirts (ya know, what this forum is all about) and want to have a slide show of tees that you sell, then certainly the distributors where you obtain your tees will allow you to use their images to display.

And it's perfectly legal to take your own pictures of the products you want to sell, even branded products like Nike or Adidas, and place them on your site without prior permission.


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## Flatcallbrand (Aug 17, 2011)

charles95405 said:


> Basically the photographer owns the photo. I would suggest you not take seriously any legal suggestions on a public forum. Be safe, consult an IP attorney


Yeah, i agree, just figured someone would have been through this process before and would have some insight 



splathead said:


> Instead of using an obscure example of an apple farm, why don't you tell us exactly what you're planning so we can get a better grasp?
> 
> For example, if you are selling t-shirts (ya know, what this forum is all about) and want to have a slide show of tees that you sell, then certainly the distributors where you obtain your tees will allow you to use their images to display.
> 
> And it's perfectly legal to take your own pictures of the products you want to sell, even branded products like Nike or Adidas, and place them on your site without prior permission.


I just thought the apple farm example would be easier to respond to, and not having to use real names of things and such, so people could relate their own questions about this more easily...

Basically were a gambling t-shirt compnay and we would like to know whether it would be ok to take pictures of local casinos and use them in a slide show?


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## binki (Jul 16, 2006)

That depends on where you are at and what you are taking pictures of and the context in the slide show. 

If you take a picture of Las Vegas Blvd. then you are probably ok. If you take a picture of a specific casino and print that image on a shirt then you may be in muddy water.


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## Flatcallbrand (Aug 17, 2011)

binki said:


> That depends on where you are at and what you are taking pictures of and the context in the slide show.
> 
> If you take a picture of Las Vegas Blvd. then you are probably ok. If you take a picture of a specific casino and print that image on a shirt then you may be in muddy water.


the shirts would be our own copyrighted designs so there is no concern there... primarily we were just curious about using pictures of other places...

so in saying that if we went to vegas, took a picture of the MGM Grand with say me standing in fron of it wearing our shirt, would we need permission from MGM to use that on our commerical website?


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