With all the copyright banter on the forum lately thought this story might be appropriate.
If you haven't heard, the model turned teacher whose face has been on Taster's Choice coffee for some time now was awarded 15.6 MILLION because Nestle apparently failed to properly secure the rights to his photo. He was evidently paid $250 bucks for the photo shoot back in the eighties but (for reasons that are not spelled out in any article I've read) never gave permission to Nestle to use the photo in the way they did.
The amount will surely drop during the appeals but I'm sure he will walk away with a nice fat award once all is said and done.
His statement lines up with some of what has been said on this forum during the copyright discussions:
"Our image is our product, whether it is our face or our talent, and they took it improperly" (sacbee.com)
Something to think about....over a cup of coffee :-)
If you haven't heard, the model turned teacher whose face has been on Taster's Choice coffee for some time now was awarded 15.6 MILLION because Nestle apparently failed to properly secure the rights to his photo. He was evidently paid $250 bucks for the photo shoot back in the eighties but (for reasons that are not spelled out in any article I've read) never gave permission to Nestle to use the photo in the way they did.
The amount will surely drop during the appeals but I'm sure he will walk away with a nice fat award once all is said and done.
His statement lines up with some of what has been said on this forum during the copyright discussions:
"Our image is our product, whether it is our face or our talent, and they took it improperly" (sacbee.com)
Something to think about....over a cup of coffee :-)