Copyright claims can come up in numerous ways. Someone can be taking your images and exploiting your copyright or someone can even issue a digital copyright take down notice of your work claiming copyright infringement. Knowing your legal rights will come in handy, I honestly say this should be an area to become an expert in with your getting into photography.

It is important to note that copyright will come up constantly throughout your career in different ways. As a professional I often times find it is people violating my copyright but on rare, rare occasions I get surprised.

Warners Brothers INC issued a DMCA on an image I own the copyright too and created. They did so because it contained a product that could be identifiable to the Harry Potter Universe. However creation of product has no baring on ownership of a photographic artwork. Legally photographers own the images they produce from the minute we click the shutter.

This particular work is several years old, the product isn’t owned or sold by Warner Brothers and most importantly they DID NOT CREATE THE IMAGE— I DID. Therefore I am the legal copyright holder. I won the battle because US Copyright Law Title 17 backs me up in my ownership of my created works.

Love the above image? Visit my art photography gallery to purchase it in the print store!