IPC Trusted Reviews; Digital Photography Competition Ongoing

Click the above title to see the contest rules page.

This competition has been notified to Pro-Imaging by our contributors because it  fails to comply with  the Bill of Rights. Pro-Imaging have verified that the rules do not fully comply with the Bill of Rights and to illustrate this extracts from this competitions rules are listed below. This report has been made available to the organiser.

If you are a competition organiser and want to understand why your competition appears here please note the following bullet points. Briefly, competitions which pass the Bill of Rights do not -

This competition has failed on one or more of the above. Click on any of the highlighted links in the above bullet points for further information, and of course comprehensive detail on all these points is given in the Bill of Rights.

The Rules of this Contest

Listed below are extracts from the rules of this competition.

On the competition page it states -

"Please don't put copyright watermarks or other identifying marks on the photo, although you may add them into the EXIF data if you wish. Don't worry; we won't steal your work

We reserve the right to publish a selection of the best entries in the competition results update a few days after the closing date, but all other rights remain with the photographer, and we will not use your pictures for any other purpose without your explicit permission."

However, on the IPC Legal Page it states -

"3. Ownership of Intellectual Propery Rights

3.2 You agree that any material (including any Intellectual Property Rights in such material), including but not limited to material sent via bulletin boards or articles submitted for publication on the Web Site or in using any of the Web Site Services ("User Generated Content") may be retained as the property of IPC. "Web Site Services" is defined in Clause 5.2 below. IPC shall have no obligations with regard to the User Generated Content to monitor the User Generated Content to ensure that it complies with applicable laws or regulations. You remain solely responsible for the User Generated Content in accordance with Clause 6.

7. Competitions

11. All entries become the absolute property of IPC and will not be returned to Entrants unless otherwise stated by IPC on the Web Site.

13. Prizes are allocated randomly from correct entries received unless otherwise stated in the Competition Rules on the Web Site. The Judge's decision is final and no correspondence will be entered into.

17. Each Entrant agrees that, by entering into any Competitions on the Web Site, it waives any rights it has which are capable of being waived under the Entrant's local law which relate to Competitions."

Pro-Imaging Comment - 

There is confusion embedded in this contest regarding the image rights IPC are claiming.

According to the competition page IPC only publish a selection of the best entries for a few days after the closing date of the competition and for no other purpose. This is highly commended by Pro-Imaging.

However, on the Legal Page it states that any material, including the intellectual property rights in that material, submitted using the web site services may be retained as the property of IPC. This statement is completely at variance with the statement on the competition page and if true means all entrants lose all rights to the images they submit.

We have notified IPC of this conflict in their competition rules and until such time as this situation is clarified by them this contest is not recommended. 

Organisations - International Publishing Corporation

Contact - Send enquiries 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 on 13 November 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. If Pro-Imaging is notified of rule changes by the organiser the competition rules will be reviewed again for compliance with the Bill of Rights. The competition will be moved to the Rights On List when the rules comply with the Bill of Rights.