If you run a website for your business, sooner or later an email like this will land in your inbox. It will have a case number, a screenshot of an image lifted from one of your pages, the name of a stock photo agency, and a deadline. It will tell you that you are using copyrighted material without a licence, and it will ask you to either prove you have permission or get in touch to “clarify the next steps.”
It will sound official. It will sound urgent. And in the vast majority of cases, the right response is to stay calm, ask questions, and not reach for your debit or credit card.
Who Sends These
The best known operator in this space is a German firm trading as Copytrack, which has also operated under the names Pixlegal and, more recently, RD Legal GmbH. They act on behalf of stock image agencies and individual photographers, hunting the web for unlicensed use of images and then writing to website owners on a commission basis. If they succeed in extracting a payment, they typically keep a large slice of it, reportedly as much as forty five per cent.
That commission model is the whole story, in a way. It rewards volume. The more emails that go out, the more chance of a payout, whether or not the underlying claim would actually stand up. Plenty of business owners who received one of these emails turned out to have a perfectly valid licence all along, bought years earlier from a stock library, supplied by a designer, or used under a royalty free agreement that the sender simply hadn’t checked.
Why You Shouldn’t Panic, or Pay Up Straight Away
A few things are worth knowing before you do anything.
* These firms are not law firms, and they are not courts. They cannot fine you. They can only ask you to settle, and hope you do.
* Many of the claims reference foreign copyright law that has limited bearing on a UK based website. UK copyright is governed by the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, and unlike the US, there is no general “fair use” defence here, only a handful of narrow exceptions such as criticism, review and reporting current events, which rarely apply to a website image.
* A genuine rights holder with a real grievance would usually ask you to take an image down first. A request that jumps straight to a settlement figure, with a tight deadline, is a sign you are dealing with a high volume operation rather than a careful one.
* Search online for the company name before you do anything. You will usually find plenty of others who received the same kind of letter, some of whom had a valid licence the sender simply hadn’t checked for.
What To Actually Do
First, check your own records. Did you, or a designer working for you, buy the image from a stock library such as Adobe Stock, Shutterstock or Canva? Was it supplied by a PR agency, a venue, or a client as part of a press pack? A quick reverse image search can also help you trace where a picture has come from.
If you find a valid licence, send proof and ask for the case to be closed. That is usually the end of it.
If you cannot trace the source, do not simply pay because the deadline is looming. Reply and ask the sender to substantiate their claim before you go any further: proof that their client owns the image, evidence of when it was first published, and the basis for whatever sum they are asking for. A request for evidence costs you nothing, and a great many of these cases simply go quiet once you ask for proof rather than reaching for your wallet.
If a reply does come back, and it escalates into something that looks like a genuine legal letter rather than a generic “authorisation request,” that is the point to get a proper opinion from a solicitor rather than handling it yourself.
Keeping Your Own House in Order
None of this is an argument for being careless with image rights. Genuine infringement claims do happen, and photographers are entitled to be paid for their work. The simplest protection is good housekeeping: keep a record of where every image on your website came from, file the licence or purchase receipt somewhere your team can find it, and make sure freelancers and designers working on your site do the same. A business that can produce proof of licence in five minutes has very little to fear from an email like this, whoever sends it.
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Useful tools…
You can use Google reverse image checker or a website like www.tineye.com to check where an image has appeared.
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Seek advice…
This article is for general information only and does not constitute legal advice. If you receive a copyright demand and are unsure how to respond, consult a solicitor or qualified legal professional.
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Our philosophy…
We’re not fans of having our images being used without proper permission, if you find one of yours being used, just ask politely for it to be removed. We try to do things properly. here’s our philosophy: click here!
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