[news updates contained at the end of article]
UK souvenir maker Temple Island Collection Ltd has won a ruling
against New English Teas which it had accused of breaching copyright by using a photo of a London bus on its packaging.
Welcoming the news, Temple Island Collection's managing director Justin Fielder – who shot the image in August 2005 and then manipulated it using Photoshop – said: 'As creator of the Red Bus image, and originators of the product concept, we gave New England Teas the opportunity to license with us and work collaboratively, but this was declined.'
The case, heard at the Patents County Court in London on 12 January, could have serious implications for photographers, according to photographic copyright expert Charles Swan, a lawyer at Swan Turton, who said: 'His honour Judge Birss QC decided that a photograph
of a red London bus against a black and white background of Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament, with a blank sky, was similar enough to another photograph of the same subject matter to infringe copyright.'
He added: 'The decision is perhaps surprising, given the commonplace subject matter of the photographs. The judge himself admitted that
he found it a difficult question, but in the end he decided that a substantial part of photograph one [Temple Island's image] had been reproduced in photograph two [New English Teas'].'
Swan warned: 'The Temple Island case is likely to herald more claims of this kind. The judgement should be studied by anyone imitating an existing photograph or commissioning a photograph based on a
similar photograph. “Inspiration' and “reference” are fine in themselves,
but there is a line between copying ideas and copying the original
expression of ideas which is often a difficult one to draw.'
Though, in the past, the cost of such court actions has made them 'uneconomic to pursue' this is all about to change, added Swan. 'The UK government has accepted a recommendation in the Hargreaves Report that the Patents County Court… should operate a small claims procedure for intellectual property claims under £5,000.'
Though the images are not identical, the judge ruled that Fielder's composition of the image, to include such features as the 'visual
contrast' of the bright red bus and monochrome background, were the
photographer's 'intellectual creation'.
Philip Partington, an intellectual property expert at law firm McDaniel & Co, added: 'The action for copyright infringement was the second made by Temple Island Collection against New English Teas.
'Action was first taken in 2010, on discovering a range of products by New English Teas showing a red bus design, which Temple
Island Collection and their lawyers felt was a copy of their famous
image.'
In an interview with Amateur Photographer (AP) on 26 January, Fielder said that his Photoshop manipulation of the image played a 'key
part' in the copyright victory: 'It was the artistic element that got us over
the line... That made it more original than just taking a photo.'
Expressing his relief after a 'long battle', Fielder added that, owing to the previous case against New English Teas, he was able to prove that
the firm had seen the red bus image at the centre of the legal
action.
However, in a further possible twist, Nicholas Houghton, the owner of New English Teas which is based in Coventry, told AP on 25 January that the legal process was ongoing. 'We can't comment I'm afraid,' he said.
In a follow-up phone call, the firm declined to say whether it plans to appeal the decision and refused to discuss the matter further. "amateurphotographer.co.uk"