Alleged Breach of Copyright by  Greenhithe Marina (Management) LLP

"Copyright Designs and Patents act 1988"

We informed Dartford Council about the inclusion of our photos in a planning document and asked for its removal from the planning portal until the photos could be deleted from it.
 Greenhithe Marina (Management) LLP were copied in on this by us.

 In an email of 14^th January 2009 Martin Murphy stated he believed the photographs had been emailed by the photographer after the raft race stating that I thought you might like to have these images. He also said that he did not imagine that I would now claim copyright over images that he believed had been provided freely and without condition. Martin Murphy also said that if we identified the photos he would remove them from the document.

We replied that the photos had never been distributed by ourselves by email. The photos in question were uploaded to our web site shortly after the raft races in both 2003 and 2004.
The only conclusion that could be made was at sometime someone has downloaded them from the internet .
 The images were put on the web site for the personal interest of the people involved or those with an interest in Greenhithe to view. They were never intended for further distribution and certainly not commercial use.
We supplied copies of the photos as taken from the web site as identification as requested. 
We offered to accept the deletion of the images to be end of the matter.
 

Martin Murphy replied that there were hundreds of people talking digital pictures at these events and there is simply no way of knowing who took the pictures. 
He also claimed that some of the images looked identical to those he and fellow partner Dale Manson took. He also stated that nothing in my email confirmed I was the copyright holder but he then offered us £5 for each image if we could prove copyright or a total £25 to a charity if we could not.

 We replied that we found his offer unacceptable and requested that he remove the images as he first offered.
We also explained that no two photographs are the identical.
No camera will exist in the same position, and no shutter will go off at the same time.
Therefore no two photographs are the same.
That we had carefully compared our images on the internet with those in Greenhithe Marina's  document and they were identical. We also explained that none of the images on the web site are as taken; they were cropped, cleaned and manipulated. They are always reduced in resolution to reduce the desirability of copying.
 Again we offered to accept the deletion of the images to be end of the matter.
Our advisors considered that comparing our images taken from our web site with those in the document was sufficient proof of breach of copyright.

 Dale Manson then visited me and we discussed the issues.
He said that deleting the images would be expensive for both themselves and the council.
He also stated that as none of our images had been sold they were of little value.
I explained they were never intended for sale or commercial use.
I said I would offer them a licensing agreement but he stated that he would never entertain the figure I verbally suggested.
He also stated that he would only delete the images if I gave him unequivocal proof that we were the copyright holders.

The advice given to us was that it was not necessary for us to provide additional proof but to save it for any future action we might take.

We then spent time checking the other Greenhithe Marina documents for other images taken from our web site. We found one in the “Planning and Design Statement” for the previous application. This image was a copy of an original artwork based on a 1886 engraving.
We again offered to accept the deletion of our images to be end of the matter.
On the 21st January we withdrew the offer to delete the images.
Instead we offered a licensing agreement for the continued use of the images explaining that some of the revenue would be donated to Dartford Cambria Sea Scouts.
The offer of this license is modest by commercial standards.

Greenhithe Marina Ltd have three times refused to accept a licensing agreement to use the images.

On the 30th January Martin Murphy claimed that the copyright in an artistic work is not infringed by anything that Greenhithe Marina have done.
He also demanded proof of being the person registered as the proprietor, under the ”Registered Designs Act 1949 (C.88)”.
This is not relevant as copyright is covered under the "Copyright Designs and Patents act 1988"
Under the act copyright is automatic and does not need to be registered.

We accepted in good faith at the start of this that the use of our photos was a misunderstanding as explained by Martin Murphy. However we feel that there can be no continued excuse for Greenhithe Marina's refusal to act honourably.