Advertising Question

Caben

Hi all,

I am in the middle of starting up a service based company and I am curious if anybody knows what measures I am required to take if I have clearly identifiable brand/s that are not mine on my website and/or advertising?

Example:

A training company has pictures of people being taught in a room with computers and although small you can clearly see "Monitor Manufacturer Ltd" on several monitors. Although the website is not intending to advertise "Monitor Manufacturer Ltd", it is.

Am I required to contact "Monitor Manufacturer Ltd" and request to use their product in this image?
Would it be fair to say that most companies Do or Do Not do this?
If I blindly went ahead with the image what are the legal costs of this indiscretion?

Finally I would like to point out that the images are all tasteful and show the "Monitor Manufacturer Ltd" in good light. But they are a big company and I am a small start up, so I think that if I request to use there brands images on my website (which are a vital part of my service) they are likely to say no.

Thanks for any advice in advance
PS: New to Boards and Forums as a whole, and unsure if this tread is in the right place. If it is not please fell free to move it.

billybunty

Caben wrote: »

Hi all,

I am in the middle of starting up a service based company and I am curious if anybody knows what measures I am required to take if I have clearly identifiable brand/s that are not mine on my website and/or advertising?

Example:

A training company has pictures of people being taught in a room with computers and although small you can clearly see "Monitor Manufacturer Ltd" on several monitors. Although the website is not intending to advertise "Monitor Manufacturer Ltd", it is.

Am I required to contact "Monitor Manufacturer Ltd" and request to use their product in this image?
Would it be fair to say that most companies Do or Do Not do this?
If I blindly went ahead with the image what are the legal costs of this indiscretion?

Finally I would like to point out that the images are all tasteful and show the "Monitor Manufacturer Ltd" in good light. But they are a big company and I am a small start up, so I think that if I request to use there brands images on my website (which are a vital part of my service) they are likely to say no.

Thanks for any advice in advance
PS: New to Boards and Forums as a whole, and unsure if this tread is in the right place. If it is not please fell free to move it.

Hi there, i have my own site as does my husband. For his site we needed generic images like your talking about i think
So the website girl sent us a link to a bank if photos/images& we picked the ones we needed, we had to pay a small fee for them. Once off fee.
If your doing it yourself perhaps google something like images/photo bank to ise on website.
Hope this helps

paulac

Hiya, I was advised not to use anyone else's pictures on my site- just in case! The last thing you want as a new start up is a solicitor letter in the door! Go to shutterstock.com and you can buy pretty much any images that you need for your site there and it will only cost a small fee. You own them then and you will be free from any worry! Best of luck!

Paula

Caben

Thanks very much for the advise. Will look into that website. It does seem to be a difficult area to know when and when not in the green zone.

Regards,
Alan

TheCostumeShop.ie: Ronan

Yeah stay away from stealing other peoples content and images. It just results in legal cases, fines and in terms of duplicate content. Stock images are cheap and available to almost every scenario imaginable.

Ofcourse if your selling the product of the owner of the image, you can simply request use of their images to help you make sales and they are likely to agree if it makes them more money.

blue4ever

do an advanced image search in google and make sute that the "free to use, share or modify, even commercially" is selected - see what you com up with there.

Fries-With-That

Hi,

Maybe I'm reading the OP wrong.

I think he is asking if he takes pictures for his website/advertising and other peoples products are used in these images as props or background will he suffer any repercussions.

.

I would imagine if you have a coffee shop selling a specific brand of coffee a major retailer like St**bu**ks wouldn't be happy with you using an image of a customer holding one of their cups on your advertising.

If you have an image of a customer holding a cup from a brand that you sell I don't think there would be a problem.

I used to operate fast food outlets and I sold a particular type of cola I always used their logo on my flyers but I did show the flyer mock up to their sales rep first.


It might not be a bad idea to run the images past their reps first.

highlandseoghan

I would advise against it. The manufacturer could issue you wiyh a solicitors letter and could cost you a lot. I would highly recommend you google stock images and go with a stock image company it will only cost you a few quid but could save you a fortune.