Pro-Imaging

Sony World Photography Awards ends 31 December 2008

The Rules of this Contest

Listed below are extracts from the rules of this competition. Note that the contest has two sets of rules, one set for professionals, and another set for amateurs. With regard to the rights needed by World Photographic Awards the professional and amateur rules are in fact the same. The extracts below, taken from the professional set of rules, detail the rights being claimed from entrants.

"6 WPA recognizes You, the author of the image, retain full ownership of the copyright in each Entry.

7.1 All entrants understand that any image submitted to the competition may be used by WPA, and its Event Partners, for marketing and promotional purposes of the event only, for a maximum of three years after the awards ceremony on 16th April 2009. You hereby grant WPA a non-exclusive, irrevocable licence in each Entry throughout the world in perpetuity in all media for any use directly or indirectly connected with the Competition but solely connected to the event, including, but not limited to:

(a) judging the Competition
(b) displaying the winning entries and runners up at public exhibitions promoting WPA and organised by WPA
(c) inclusion within the Website, a World Photography Awards book, magazine or similar
(d) inclusion within any materials promoting of the Competition and / or any exhibition organised by WPA, in the promotion of the WPA
(e) inclusion on Competition- and exhibition-related products to be sold by the WPA or any third party following the individual agreement by the author
(f) sub-licencing the Entries to the press for reproduction in connection with the Competition and any exhibition
(g) allowing viewers of the Website to view images on a computer screen, PDA or mobile telephone and store such pages in electronic form on disk or on a PDA or mobile telephone (but not on any server or other storage device connected to a network) for their personal, non-commercial use only. Please also refer to clause 9.

8. Any photograph used by WPA shall carry a credit line. Any failure to provide such credit line shall not be deemed to be a breach, as long as WPA uses its reasonable endeavours to rectify such failure within a reasonable period from the date of notice of such failure.

9 You acknowledge that is Your responsibility for protecting any Entry against image misuse by any third party, for example, but not limited to the insertion of a watermark. WPA and its Event Partners assume no responsibility and are not liable for any image misuse."

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
• Pass, 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

• Pass, The organisers free usage is time limited as per The Bill of Rights
  
• Pass, The sponsors free usage is time limited as per The Bill of Rights
• Pass, Book usage is time limited as per The Bill of Rights
  
• Pass, free usage only promotes the contest as per The Bill of Rights

3 Commercial Usage Rights Claimed

• Pass, Commercial use is freely negotiated 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
• Pass, 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 meets every requirement of the The Bill of Rights.

This contest is recommended.

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Organisations - World Photography Awards Ltd, Sony

Judges - The images are judged by members of the World Photographic Academy comprised of some of the world's leading photographers, gallery owners, picture editors, photographic foundations, agents, managers, publishers and other respected industry members. Further information about the academy can be read here.

Contact - Send enquiries about this contest to Sony World Photography Awards by using the contact form on their website.

© 2008 Pro-Imaging; Last updated on 26 September 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.