The Artful Jurist

Okay, here’s an interesting turn of events…

Last year an American family has its group photo put on its Christmas cards. Ho-ho-ho.

This year, without the family having known anything about it, that photo ended up in a large storefront advertisement in the Czech Republic. Huh-huh-huh???

So how did that happen? Well, it seems it was downloaded from the Internet, where one of the family members had posted it to her blog. Ah, you never know where an Internet upload will lead.

In this case it led to a food store in Prague getting a hold of it and using it in its advertisement?something the family only learned about when a friend who was visiting the city happened to pass by the store and recognized the image. Since the photo was used without the family’s permission and without the permission of the professional photographer whom the family had hired to take it, two legal issues arise:

(1) The family members each have a right to control the exploitation of their own likenesses, and using their likenesses without permission violates their right of publicity.

(2) Assuming she didn’t sell it, the photographer holds the copyright on that photo, and so the photog is the only one allowed to authorize the making of copies.

How do you say “oops!” in the Czech language?

Anyway, the reports are that the store has taken down the image.