Bridgeman Art Library

Bridgeman Art Library were founded in 1972 to work with artists, libraries and museums to make fine art available for reproduction on a commercial basis. They claim to have images from over 8,000 collections and 29,000 artists catalogued and key-worded to make searching easy via their on-line catalogues. They have offices in London, Paris, New York and Berlin.

The company was involved in the case Bridgeman Art Library v Corel Corp in which Bridgeman sought to prove that Corel had infringed Bridgeman's copyright by using Bridgeman's photographs of artworks. The court concluded that photographs merely copying works of art in the public domain were not copyrightable, and therefore use of Bridgeman’s photographs by Corel did not amount to copyright infringement.

Bridgeman Art Library lost this long argued and complex case, and lost again on appeal against the first court's ruling. The defence argued that the photographs were created as slavish copies of artworks and thus lacked all originality, this ruling was upheld by the court. Originality is a key element in determining whether a work can be copyrighted. 

This summary is a simplification of the complex legal arguments involving both US and UK law as detailed at the above link. The ruling is of widespread concern to many museums and libraries which obtain considerable revenue raised from reproduction fees.

About this Report

Competitions and appeals involving the submission of creative works are notified to us by our contributors from around the world. Listed below are some competitions or image appeals promoted by the above organisation. They have not met the standards set out in the Bill of Rights.

If the terms and conditions of a contest or appeal do not comply with the standards set out in the Bill of Rights a report such as this produced and a link to it is added to the Rights Off List. We have listed in this report the terms and conditions not in compliance with the Bill of Rights to help the organiser carry out a review. The extracted terms and conditions are shown below in italics.

For advice on why failing to comply with the standards set out in the Bill of Rights is a serious issue please read this article.

If at some future date a competition organiser decides to join the Bill of Rights Supporters Group, thus ensuring that all their contests will comply with the Bill of Rights, the Rights Off report for that organisation's competition(s) will be unpublished.

The purpose of the Bill of Rights Campaign is to provide education to the public about the value of rights and to encourage competition organisers seeking submissions of creative works to adopt the standards set out in the Bill of Rights.

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The Art of the Mash-Up

Closing Date 11 March 2010

RULES

The design competition is open to graphic designers, illustrators and design students over the age of 18.

Images obtained and used from Bridgeman are for the express purposes of the design competition only and cannot be used for reproduction. Bridgeman images used within your design must be licensed separately and credited appropriately if you wish to reproduce your design for self-promotional purposes, both online and in print.

Your cover artwork must be based upon a work in the Bridgeman archive (as artist reference) or include Bridgeman images in the composite. Any additional elements must be your own original illustrations or photographs or works in the public domain. Images from other photography licensing agencies are prohibited. You agree to indemnify Bridgeman Art Library and Quirk Books for any or all issues with third parties due to the use of any non Bridgeman material.

By entering the competition you are giving Bridgeman Art Library permission to publish your entry both online and in print (for contest promotional purposes only).

By entering the competition you agree to give Quirk Books an exclusive worldwide license to use your entry for any purposes related to its projects or lines of business.

Quirk Books has received and will receive numerous proposals for book concepts or ideas, including mash-ups, as part of its business. Quirk Books also has a team of consultants and in-house writers, editors, and big thinkers that also develop their own ideas or concepts for new products, books, movies, TV shows and other entertainment vehicles. This is all setting the stage for the simple fact that we may have already been pitched or thought of your idea and you agree not to request money if we have already thought of the same or similar idea as your entry.

COMMENT ON THE RULES

1. The terms and conditions are granting exclusive use (to Quirk Books) of the entrants work.

2. The terms and conditions do not state that the entrant will always be credited when his work is reproduced.

3. All entrants, whether winners or not, are granting Quirk Books and Bridgeman Art Library use of their work for ever, the Bill of Rights requires a time limit on usage to be set.

4. All entrants are granting usage beyond that needed to promote the contest; entrants' works can be used for any purpose by Quirk Books. The Bill of Rights requires free usage to be restricted to promoting the contest and no other purpose.  If organisations wish to use the entrants' works for any other purpose the Bill of Rights permits this providing license usage terms are negotiated with the creator independently of the competition.

The reader is referred to the Bill of Rights for more detail regarding the above issues.

To summarise, the rules of this contest permit Quirk Books to harvest all creative works submitted by entrants, use them exclusively, for any purpose, forever and without payment to the creator. Bridgeman Art Library fought hard to defend its rights in a significant legal case. They are well aware of the value of rights to rights holders, and in particular to individual creatives. Therefore it is both surprising and disappointing that they should have approved such terms and conditions.

SPONSORS

#Quirk Books

CONTACT 

To complain to the organiser use this email address; Kim Tidwell, Marketing Manager, This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

To visit the competition website click the competition title above to submit the free photo we have created. Note that the competition link may cease to work at some point after the competition results are announced.

You can help the Bill of Rights campaign by complaining to the organiser urging them to change their terms and conditions.  If time is at a premium for you we have prepared a complaint email which you can copy and send to the organiser. Alternatively, or as well as, you can submit the free image we have prepared to register your complaint simply by entering the free image to the contest.

Where a contest automatically displays entrants works on the contest website as they arrive the free image can also be used to test the competition and determine if it is stripping metadata. The test results can be submitted to a survey by the Controlled Vocabulary Group.

The Bill of Rights campaign depends on your active support, your help will make a difference.

Updated on 3 February 2011

The Bill of Rights Standards for Photography Competitions

Competitions which meet all the standards set out in the Bill of Rights do not do any of the following -

© Bill of Rights Supporters Group

The above text may be reproduced providing a link is given to the Bill of Rights For Photography Competitions.

Any text reproduced above in italics has been extracted from a competition website for the purposes of review.

Organisations who would like to be promoted as a Bill of Rights Supporter and have their competitions promoted on the Rights On List can use this contact form. One of the campaign team will get in touch with you.