Pro-Imaging

International Garden Photographer of the Year 2009 ends 31 January 2009

The Rules of this Contest

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

"6.5 All images not short-listed will be deleted from our server within 48 hours of the announcement of the winners."

"11. USAGE AND LICENCING OF SHORTLISTED PHOTOGRAPHS

11.1 If your image is NOT shortlisted it will be deleted within 48 hours of the end of the competition.

11.1 If your image is short-listed you will be contacted and invited to grant permission for your image to be used to promote the Competition and exhibition only. For avoidance of doubt, no free usage of any photograph is permitted by International Garden Photographer of the Year, or any of its partners or sponsors outside the scope of the International Garden Photographer of the Year competition and exhibition. There is no plan envisaged by International Garden Photographer of the Year, or any of its partners or sponsors, to create a general commercial archive of photographs entered into this competition.

Failure to agree to this licence will not disqualify any photograph from the competition.

This invitation will state as follows:

11.3.1 You grant International Garden Photographer of the Year and its supporting partners a non-exclusive, irrevocable, royalty free licence to reproduce, enlarge, publish or exhibit, on any media, the photographs for any  purpose connected with the Competition. This may include, but is not limited to:

(a) inclusion on the Site and on the websites of sponsors and supporters;

(b) inclusion in associated books;

(c) display at any associated exhibitions;

(d) use in press releases to be distributed to national, regional & specialist press giving information about or promoting the Competition.

11.3.2 You also agree that the organisers can sub-license images to the media for reproduction in connection with the Competition and Exhibition only. International Garden Photographer of the Year will make every effort to ensure that name credits are given to any photograph published in any medium.

11.3.3 Images used on any merchandise commissioned by the organisers will be subject to separate agreements which will be discussed individually with photographers."

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 a Pass or a 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 

2 Free Usage Durations Claimed

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

Detailed notes are given in the Conclusions section below for the exemptions 

3 Commercial Usage Rights Claimed

4 Declarations

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

5 Contest End Date

Conclusions

This contest has a number of positive aspects to it which were taken into account when giving an exemption from the five year free usage rule. 

The first is that although shortlisted entries are invited to grant a "non-exclusive, irrevocable, royalty free licence" to IGPOTY and its supporting partners, failure to agree to this license will not disqualify the entrant from the competition. So although the organisers are requesting a perpetual license from short listed entrants, the entrants are free to decide for themselves whether to agree to this request or not. This is an exceptional provision not seen in any other contest todate.

Secondly IGPOTY clearly state that "For avoidance of doubt, no free usage of any photograph is permitted by International Garden Photographer of the Year, or any of its partners or sponsors outside the scope of the International Garden Photographer of the Year competition and exhibition. There is no plan envisaged by International Garden Photographer of the Year, or any of its partners or sponsors, to create a general commercial archive of photographs entered into this competition." Such a clear statement of policy in the rules is welcomed by Pro-Imaging and we would hope that other competition organisers will follow IGPOTY's lead in this respect.

Thirdly this contest deletes all entries not shortlisted for prizes and we applaud this provision. 

Pro-Imaging and IGPOTY had detailed and lengthy discussions about the rules of this contest the result of which is that Pro-Imaging are pleased to promote it on our Rights On List.

Organisations - Garden Photographer of the Year Limited, Photography Monthly, The English Garden,  Garpa, Calumet Photographic

Judges - Last years judges and biographical details are listed here.  The full panel of judges has yet to be announced for the 2009 competition but you can register to be notified as soon as they are announced. 

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

© 2008 Pro-Imaging; Last updated on 30 June 2008

The above text may be reproduced providing the Pro-Imaging copyright notice is displayed with a link to the Pro-Imaging website.

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.