Pro-Imaging

The Royal Horticultural Society Photo Competition 2008 ends 26 September 2008

The Rules of this Contest

Listed below are extracts from the rules of this competition. These extracts detail the rights being claimed from entrants.

"16 Copyright will remain with the photographer, but the RHS claims the right to use any prize-winning entries in publicity material, exhibitions and publications, including the RHS and Medici greeting card collection, to promote the RHS Photographic Competition."

Results of Testing the Rules

Listed below are the results of the tests we carried out on this competition's rules. The tests are all based on the standards set out in The Bill of Rights. By adopting these standards competition organisers can create competition rules that meet the needs of organisers and are fair and respectful to the rights of entrants. For each test a result is given which can be Pass of Fail. Competitions that pass all these tests go on The Rights On List, those that don't go on The Rights Off List.

If the rules are vague and we cannot determine whether the rules pass a particular test or not the result is shown as Unclear.  Where a test is not necessary the result is shown as N/A.

Click on any result below for more information about that specific test.

1 Copyright & Moral Rights 

• Pass, All photographers entering the contest retain their copyright
• Pass, The contest does not require any entrants to waive moral rights
• Fail, A credit is always given to the photographer when the image is published
  
• Pass, All the documents that must be completed by each entrant to participate in or win a contest are shown
  

2 Free Usage Durations Claimed

• Fail, The organisers free usage is time limited as per The Bill of Rights
  
• Fail, The sponsors free usage is time limited as per The Bill of Rights
• N/A, Book usage is time limited as per The Bill of Rights
  
• Fail, free usage only promotes the contest or is used for a book 

3 Commercial Usage Rights Claimed

• Fail, Commercial usage is rights managed & time limited as per The Bill of Rights
• Pass, Entrants are not required to sign commercial usage licenses

4 Declarations

• Pass, The organisations that acquire rights are all named
• Fail, This (or last) years Judges are named along with brief bio details

5 Contest End Date

• Pass, The contest end date is within 16 months of the contest being announced

Conclusions

This contest fails The Bill of Rights because -

• There is no statement limiting the duration of free usage as per The Bill of Rights
• Commercial usage is made of the entries (by Medici & RHS) but there is no time limited rights managed agreement to license and limit such usage.
• The rules fail to mention that all published photos will be credited
• No details of the judges are given 

The Royal Horticultural Society is a registered charity in the United Kingdom. Unless you are a supporter of it's aims and are happy to lose rights to your photograph on the basis that you are thereby supporting RHS, we cannot recommend this contest.

Even if you are a supporter of the RHS, you still need to consider the fact that Medici, a commercial operation in business to make a profit is also getting free use of the images for ever. Clearly that is unacceptable under the terms of The Bill of Rights, such commercial usage should be limited by the use of a non-exclusive rights managed agreement time limited as per The Bill of Rights condition 3.

Organisations - Royal Horticultural Society, Medici

Judges - unnamed and unnumbered.

Contact - Send enquiries and views about this contest to This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

© 2008 Pro-Imaging; Last updated 10 June 2008

The above text may be reproduced providing the Pro-Imaging copyright notice is displayed.

Text reproduced above in quotes has been extracted from the competition website for the purposes of review in this report.

NB. If the competition rules are changed after updated date shown above it is the competition organisers responsibility to notify Pro-Imaging of changes made.