Questionable Copyright Court Ruling

An English court has ruled that in favor of a commercial poster company that argued that a photo that showed a similar (but different) scene taken by a different person in a different place nevertheless infringed the copyright of a poster.

While it seems likely that the person making the second image was directly copying the “cut-out” concept of the first (by making the bus red in an otherwise monochrome image), this ruling could get really messy. Check out the post here: Insane Eglish Copyright Ruling Creates Ownership of Idea in Photo Composition.

We need reasonable copyright protection for photographers, artists, authors and other content creators, but if individual cases are adjudicated poorly it will simply provide more fodder for those wishing to weaken copyright laws.