Being threatened with intellectual property rights

[mwarren]

Hi there

Short version of a long story.

We manufacture furniture. That furniture is bought by independent showrooms and put on display/sold in their shops.

We paid for a photographer to go to a shop and photograph our product in there (with the shop's consent).

I've used the photographs on our Instagram but haven't tagged or credited the shop (because it's our photograph of our manufactured product) and he's threatening lawyers and saying it's his intellectual property because the photo is inside his shop.

In the photo, nothing identifying can be seen (apart from our product) just white walls.

We're cutting this shop off because he's been like this for a while, but I don't want to lose my nice image content which wasn't cheap to have photographed.

Basically... does he have a leg to stand on, or is it my content, my imagery, my IP etc.?

Thanks

[Manxman]

You shouldn't create duplicate threads. It confuses people and can lead to contradictory advice. (eg somebody provides advice on one of your threads without realising that you have already added something to the other thread which renders their advice meaningless)

[R0b]

Basically... does he have a leg to stand on, or is it my content, my imagery, my IP etc.?

That's the million pound question.

The starting point in law is that the person who took the image owns it, not the person who commissioned the work.

Did you have an agreement with the photographer that ownership of the image belongs to you and that he agrees to assign/transfer all rights? If the answer is no, then you don't own it rather the photographer does.

When you obtained consent from the shop, did you agree to assign/transfer ownership of the image? If not, the shop has no leg to stand on. If you did agree, then the shop still has no leg to stand on but you could be in breach of an agreement with the shop and the shop could in theory sue you.