Not All Releases Are Created Equal
Good evening, folks. As I sit here in my home office trying to get some work done, listening to my kids playing over the internet with their friends, I am thinking about how confusing the subject of copyright releases can be. For example, many of my possible graduation signs customers have kids whose senior portraits were taken by Prestige (aka Lifetouch). These potential customers ask me to use their kid’s senior portraits on a lawn sign and I tell them that they must supply a copyright release for me to be able to use someone else’s professional work.
Several folks have sent me a release that is nearly identical to THIS one which is usually printed on the back of the picture CD envelope. The top paragraph sounds good enough (“user warrants that (s)he is authorized by all parties appearing in the images to possess and use the images on the CD…”) but the important stuff is written in the second paragraph, just above the customer signature line.
The second paragraph has the following language (emphasis added), “If signed by an authorized user, Lifetouch authorizes the use, reproduction, distribution and display of such copyrighted images from the CD for any lawful, personal, noncommercial purpose. Commercial use, including for advertising or creating goods or services for resale is not permitted.” This means that the using said photos for a derivative work (such as a senior lawn sign) is not permitted and is, in fact, a violation of US Copyright Law. The final sentence on the document, after the signature and related blanks, is even more clear (again emphasis added), “Lifetouch neither assigns its copyright nor waives its rights for any purpose other than those expressly contained in the License Agreement.”
The bottom line is this - not all releases are created equal. Not all releases grant the same permissions or rights. In the case of the release depicted above, it is certainly NOT a copyright release. If you are a Lifetouch/Prestige school photo customer, please send me an email and I will explain Lifetouch’s procedure for how to obtain the proper release. Once you have secured the necessary release, I will happy to serve you.
(The sample release depicted above was found on the internet at https://idoc.pub/documents/us-copy-authorization-for-lifetouch-photography-qvndgyq1pwnx).