Building firms have been served a warning by the high court not to use photos of other companies’ work on their websites.
A judge has ordered the owner of a home improvement company in Yorkshire to pay more than £6,000 in damages for infringement of copyright after it used 21 images from the website of a London loft conversion specialist.
Absolute Lofts South West London, which provides loft conversions in the London area, brought proceedings against Artisan Home Improvements, which operates in and around Bradford, over the use of its photographs – taken by Craig Colton – on Artisan’s own website. The pictures all featured loft conversions done by Absolute.
The Artisan website was shut down in the middle part of May 2014, and the images complained of were removed and replaced by 21 licensed images of loft conversions purchased from a stock photograph library. The website went live again and business was continued for a while until Artisan went into liquidation in April 2015.
Artisan’s owner, Darren Ludbrook, admitted infringing Absolute’s copyrights and accepted joint liability and it fell to Judge Hacon to decide the quantum of damages.
He awarded £300 under the “user principle”, to reflect what the parties would have agreed as willing licensor and willing licensee, using what Ludbrook actually paid in May 2014 as “as good a guide as any to what would hypothetically have been agreed between the parties”.
In addition, he awarded £6,000, finding that Absolute Lofts is entitled to “an award taking into account unfair profits accrued to Artisan” under European Directive 2004/48/EC (“the Enforcement Directive”).
While he said that the benefit to Artisan did not adversely affect Absolute so as to require compensatory damages in the strict sense, he continued: “Nonetheless, the unfair profits which accrued to Artisan were made on the back of Mr Colton’s intellectual creativity which generated the copied images. I think that Absolute Lofts as copyright owner is entitled to be compensated for actual prejudice it has suffered. The prejudice in question is that it has enjoyed no part of the unfair profit accrued to Artisan from exploiting Mr Colton’s photographic skills. I also take the view that the strictly compensatory damages of £300 would lack the dissuasive element required by art.3(2) of the Enforcement Directive.”
He ruled that Absolute would be entitled to the same sum under section 97(2) of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, but that those awards are not cumulative, meaning the total award is £6,300.
Absolute Lofts South West London Ltd v Artisan Home Improvements Ltd and anr Chancery (Judge Hacon) 14 September 2015
Michael Hicks (instructed by Donald Pugh, Solicitor) for the claimant
Thomas Jones (instructed by Schofield Sweeney LLP) for the defendants
