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Ford Claims Ownership Of Your Pictures

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the like-a-child-shouting-MINE dept.

Mike Rogers writes "In a move that can only be described as 'Copyright Insanity', Ford Motor Company now claims that they hold the rights to any image of a Ford vehicle, even if it's a picture you took of your own car. The Black Mustang Club wanted to put together a calendar featuring member's cars and print it through CafePress, but an attorney from Ford nixed the project, stating that the calendar pics and 'anything with one of (member's) cars in it infringes on Ford's trademarks which include the use of images of their vehicles.' Does Ford have the right to prevent you from printing images of a car you own?"

2 of 739 comments (clear)

  1. Re:people own the *cars*, too, and their pics by drakaan · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Trademark isn't relevant either.

    Trademarks exist in order to prevent one company from marketing something that appears to be a product of another company.

    There are two potential trademarks at issue. One is "Ford", and the other is "Mustang".

    The creators of the calendar are not selling Ford calendars, nor are they using a trademark in a way that would be likely to make a purchaser of the calendar believe that Ford Motor Company created the calendar.

    The creators of the calendar are also not selling Mustang calendars, nor are they using the trademark in a way that would be likely to make a purchaser of the calendar believe that the owner of the Mustang trademark (the Ford Motor Company) created the calendar.

    The calendar is clearly associated with "BMC" (aka, the "Black Mustang Club"), and the Club's title did not apparently raise the ire of Ford's trademark lawyers (as it shouldn't have). If they were taking pictures of cars on Ford dealership lots, then maybe Ford would have a point on copyright, since they nominally own the vehicles on those lots, but not on trademark, at least not as the calendar is currently composed.

    Yes, the OP failed to mention trademark, but that doesn't make Ford's move any less bone-headed. Ignoring the fact that they are alienating a group of people who are (or were, at least) fans of one of the company's cars, they are opening themselves up to countersuit, and a whole bunch of bad PR...all over a fan calendar. The lack of immediate reaction from their PR department (legal did WHAT??? Our bad...go ahead and print the calendar...Chevy sucks!) is staggering.

    --
    "Murphy was an optimist" - O'Toole's commentary on Murphy's Law
  2. Re:Nope. by tic!lock · · Score: 5, Interesting

    What's even funnier is that none of them seem to agree on whether it's legal or not. :)

      (As a part time photographer who sells his pictures I have an interest in this, and *my* lawyer tells me that as long as there isn't any brand confusion - that is, as long as I'm not selling my pictures as "official" photographs, I have nothing to worry about. I'm currently going round and round with the local city council over the same issue, ie photographs of historical city landmarks which the city seems to think they have the rights to limit photographs of. They even have that printed on the landmark info posts. Sigh. Can anyone point me to relevant cases? )

    tic