product image Copyright Questions ?

(From Canada) I've been working on my site for a few months now (noob) and have to say I'm proud of my work. But something hit me last night which I never really looked into since it's my first time building a site I'm starting to get a little overwhelmed with all this new stuff that just keeps popping up ... sorry to ramble ... the question is regarding images ... I am trying to build a online store for our current local business to better service our clients. We are not wholesalers but have a merchant license to resell ... so I know it's ok what were doing even our distributors for products know of our plans ... the problem is that I'm practically done the catalog and have used images from manufacturers sites , google, etc and have re-sized and edited some to suit my needs. But !! I think I'm violating some laws if I upload my site. Please any help or direction in helping me understand what are images laws for websites and if i am violating laws ... what can i do besides take images on my own of every product !!! I would think that companies, manufacturers would allow a reseller to use their images cause how else am I to advertise for them ? Any help or direction appreciated . Thank You !:unsure:

If you are using your manufacturers/distributors' images to sell those products, you should be fine. It would be wise to contact them about it. If you used an image copied from a competitor's site, that is bad news. Other images copied from the web are a gray area - some may be copyrighted, some may not be.

I would suppose obtaining experss permission is the best response....

The only 2 that I have seen press the matter are Ford and Sony

Others might post additional companies...

gjh42, kobra ... thnx for a lead and response ! I guess the contacting the actual manufacturers/distributors would be best response ... Hopefully i get the rights :) cause most of my images are from their sites i'll have to do some more research on the other images or simply start taking pics on my own since some images are just unusable do to size, etc ... i did do a search with google and i guess they have an advanced search filter for images and copyright ... very cool feature but no luck for me all my searches turn out with no results ... thnx again for the fast reply ... much appreciated !

Contact a lawyer. You don't want to mess around when it comes to legality of things. You would be surprised what people "think" is the correct thing to do and you and your company can be held responsible for your actions. Good luck

There's no reason to contact a lawyer if the OP gets permission for all images from the manufacturer/distributors... or takes new photos of the products he is selling.

A must read about Getty Images...

http://www.extortionletterinfo.com/index.htm

jgg1974:

Contact a lawyer. You don't want to mess around when it comes to legality of things. You would be surprised what people "think" is the correct thing to do and you and your company can be held responsible for your actions. Good luck

jgg1974 is right. Consider this case: http://blog.webcopyplus.com/2011/02/14/legal-lesson-learned-copywriter-pays-4000-for-10-photo/

DrByte:

jgg1974 is right.
Only if you are grabbing them off the internet which is not something anyone should be doing for commercial purposes

Depending upon what your supplier has and from where they are derived from:

If a manufacturer, and these are their own products and images, many will provide them to you on CD, or via a link. Just maintain the communications

If a distributor for several manufactures, be wary as I stated, many will provide you images from/through these mfg's and this does not actually pass manufacturer permission to you as they most likely do not have the right to convey permission

One must get express permission from the individual manufacturer

You can also use tineye add-on for firefox. It will let you know where images are being used or stored.
One we got from a "free" source turned out to be Getty.