Hey. Recently a friend and I were considering starting a small business selling things such as posters, calendars, stickers, etc. based off of our escapades on photoshop. The question is does using these photos of these celebrities infringe anything, and can We get sued as a result? Likewise, The background maintains a Royalty Free use, and everything else was made from scratch by myself, say for the photos of John Cena and Shia LAbouef, retrieved from Google ...
Your use of celebrity photos makes you vulnerable to a couple of different lawsuits.
If you use photos taken by someone other than yourself, you are infringing on their copyrights in the photos. You would need to seek out permission from the photographers to use their photos in your business venture.
If you use photos of celebrities, you are infringing on their right of publicity - their right to control how their image is presented to the public in a commercial manner. You would need to seek out permission from the celebrities to use their images to drive your sales.
And, depending on how the photos of the celebrities are used (on what sort of merchandise), you can also run into additional problems that center on reputational injury.
You can sell photos you yourself take of celebrities you see in public places to "news" magazines, because what celebrities do is considered newsworthy. But you cannot use the photos you take in a commercial venture, and you cannot invade the privacy of the celebrities to take the photos.
I think you will probably need to rethink your plans - although reviewing them with an IP attorney in your area is also something you can do to determine what you can and can't do safely.
Good luck.
