Judeumeh's Blog

Last year, I wrote a post on the above topic discussing, among other things, the approach proposed by Games organisers to tackle such sharp practices as “ambush marketing” and “unfair association with the Games”. They even produced a list of restricted words and phrases (including: Olympic, Paralympic, London Games, 2012 etc) to protect brand exclusivity and sponsorship preorgatives. However, as the saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand words, and when the world’s fastest 100M athlete cheekily commandeered a photographer’s camera to take pictures of the photographers, spectators and fellow athletes, a rather interesting debate was ignited in a popular photography magazine forum, mainly about copyright and ownership rights of those pictures, which were subsequently published by the photographer in his own newspaper.

Images of & from Usain Bolt, the photographer (*see below for image sources)

The forum discussion can be found here, and it includes the following key questions:

1. Who owns the rights to the pictures taken; Is it Usain Bolt, or the Photographer (i.e. owner of the camera and memory card)?
2. Does the fact that the camera and memory card (including photographic data) remain property of the photographer have any bearing on rights ownership to Bolt’s pictures?
3. Should Bolt have any right to the art (or computerised data) that he created on equipment he does not own? (this one prompted comparisons with a Banksy grafitti art on someone’s wall)
4. Does the photographer’s publication of the picture (presumably without permission) violate Bolt’s rights as ‘artiste’, or arguably as copyright owner?
5. What about the venue / organisers rules and conditions regarding accredited photographers and their works?

All very good questions, and no doubt something a good IP lawyers can argue for and / or against, depending on who is paying the fees, but suffice it to say that the best comment, in my opinion, came from a forum member who reminded others that “copyright subsists upon the creation of the art…” and that it rightfully belongs to the individual creating the art, i.e. Usain Bolt, in this instance. Furthermore, I would add that the author of an original work, even if not the copyright owner, also has the moral right to seek redress against any objectionable use of the work.

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*Images sourced, from left to right:

• http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/olympics/athletics/9465959/Usain-Bolt-takes-his-own-Olympic-photographs.html
• http://www.petapixel.com/2012/08/09/usain-bolt-nabs-photographers-dslr-snaps-awesome-pov-shots/ (camera owner in red circle)
• http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/olympics/article-2186349/London-2012-Olympics-Usain-Bolts-photos-200m-victory-revealed.html