If you’re a photographer in the UK, you might want to think twice about shooting and selling a photograph that has a similar composition to an existing photo. Souvenir company Temple Island Collection has won a copyright infringement case against tea company New English Teas after a photo of a red London bus was used on tea packaging. Photo copyright expert and lawyer Charles Swan states,

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.

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, top] had been reproduced in photograph two [New English Teas', bottom].

Although the photo itself wasn’t copied, the judge ruled that the similarity of the ‘visual contrast’ of the red bus and B&W background infringed on the original photographer’s ‘intellectual creation’. The case is reminiscent of photographer David LaChapelle’s lawsuit against Rihanna for infringing upon his style in one of her music videos. Rihanna ended up paying an undisclosed sum of money to LaChapelle to settle the case.

Photographers Face Copyright Threat after Shock Ruling [Amateur Photographer]

Singer Bob Dylan is being accused of plagiarism after several paintings in his recent art show were found to have “striking resemblances” to works by photographers such as Henri Cartier-Bresson, Dmitri Kessel and Léon Busy. An example is Dylan’s painting titled Opium (above left), which appears to be directly copied from Busy’s Vietnam (above right). A Flickr user also found that Dylan had copied six photographs — one of which an artificial Photoshop edit — from his Flickr stream.
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At what point does inspiration turn into plagiarism? That’s the question that popped up last year when Rhianna was sued by David LaChapelle over scenes found in one of her music videos, and it’s the same issue with a lawsuit recently filed by photographer Janine Gordon against photographer Ryan McGinley. Gordon claims that 150 of McGinley’s images — including some used for a Levi’s ad campaign — are “substantially based” on her photos. In the three pairs of disputed images shown above, the ones on the left are by Gordon and the ones on the right by McGinley.
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Fashion photographer David LaChapelle is launching a lawsuit against Rihanna over the controversial music video for her song S&M. LaChapelle alleges that “the music video is directly derived from and substantially similar to the LaChapelle works” and that it copied the “composition, total concept, feel, tone, mood, theme, colors, props, settings, decors, wardrobe and lighting” of eight of his photographs.
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Last week we reported that a photographer was in hot water after photographing public art and selling it as stock photography. It just so happens that a new case has arisen involving just the opposite: sculptors basing work off a photograph without permission.

The above image, “Sad Vader”, is a popular photograph made by New York City-based photographer Alex Brown that has become ubiquitous on the Internet and sometimes published without crediting Brown. UK-based sculptors Craig Little and Blake Whitehead of littlewhitehead created a sculpture based on the photograph titled “Spam” due to how the photograph can seemingly be found everywhere on the web. Here’s a photograph of the installation:

When emailed by Brown, the artists replied,

On all the blogs we found it on, none of them mentioned the maker of the image. We never knew the image had been taken by a professional photographer.

In an email to Photo District News, Brown states,

My main objection to all of this is that I exhibit this image in galleries and sell limited edition prints, [...] By appropriating it, they directly undermine my ability to do so.

What are your thoughts on this situation? What action should be taken?

(via PDNPulse)

Update on February 10th, 2010: Dave, a reader, tells us that the British Journal of Photography got in touch with littlewhitehead and received a pretty lengthy statement. Here’s a snippet:

We contacted Alex immediately after hearing of his concerns and asked if there was anyway we could deal with the situation amicably. We assured him it was never our intention to upset him, nor was it merely to copy what he had already done. However, instead of replying to us, he has selected certain parts of this email and posted blogs slandering us plagiarists. He has also contacted galleries we’ve worked with also slandering us plagiarists. We do not really believe this is an appropriate first step towards dealing with the situation amicably.

Image credits: Sad Vader by Alex Brown. Spam by littlewhitehead.