Legal Issues about Pictures

[ws6whiteshark]

What is the name of your state? PA

This is going to be a good one. Last March we listed our home with an agent who, in addition to ours, took pictures of the inside and outside of the house. He used these pictures on the MLS listing, his website, Realtor.com and featured tour. He copied the pictures on a CD disk and gave to us to keep since they were pictures of our house. I placed the pictures on our webshots homepage and loaded them on our computer. When the listing had expired in July and the house had not been sold, we decided to change realtors. The new agent asked if there were any pictures we'd like to use, we pointed her to our webshots page and told her to go ahead and use whatever pictures she felt best showed our home for her listing. Today, we received a nasty email from the former agent who wanted the pictures he took down, compensation for using them and on and on... We contacted our agent and spoke with her and she thought it was a bit petty, but we'll go ahead and change out what he thinks is his. What I don't get is if he GAVE those pictures to use to keep, why can't we do what we please with those pictures? The disk he gave us did not have anything saying the pictures were COPYWRITED and the property of the agent or his broker.

Any thoughts on this? Actually there was a recent article on this on who's pictures are who's?

Thanks.

Scott

 

[justalayman]

he has a copyright merely by being the person who took the pictures. he was very much within his rights to make the demands he did.

He gave you a copy of the pictures but presumably merely for your personal use. You used them for commercial purposes. I would also presume he has the same pics in his portfolio.

 

[HomeGuru]

What is the name of your state? PA

This is going to be a good one. Last March we listed our home with an agent who, in addition to ours, took pictures of the inside and outside of the house. He used these pictures on the MLS listing, his website, Realtor.com and featured tour. He copied the pictures on a CD disk and gave to us to keep since they were pictures of our house. I placed the pictures on our webshots homepage and loaded them on our computer. When the listing had expired in July and the house had not been sold, we decided to change realtors. The new agent asked if there were any pictures we'd like to use, we pointed her to our webshots page and told her to go ahead and use whatever pictures she felt best showed our home for her listing. Today, we received a nasty email from the former agent who wanted the pictures he took down, compensation for using them and on and on... We contacted our agent and spoke with her and she thought it was a bit petty, but we'll go ahead and change out what he thinks is his. What I don't get is if he GAVE those pictures to use to keep, why can't we do what we please with those pictures? The disk he gave us did not have anything saying the pictures were COPYWRITED and the property of the agent or his broker.

Any thoughts on this? Actually there was a recent article on this on who's pictures are who's?

Thanks.

Scott

**A: what did the principal broker of the former agent tell you about the photos?

 

[ws6whiteshark]

**A: what did the principal broker of the former agent tell you about the photos?

Nothing... didn't hear anything from the Broker.

 

[HomeGuru]

Nothing... didn't hear anything from the Broker.

**A: didn't you ask?