Legal Question in Intellectual Property in Michigan

Re: Photos published on the my website

I think it's common courtesy to ask a client before you use their home on your website. There was no agreement that the work involved included the right to photograph their home and use it in advertising. I think you do need a release, but I'm not sure if there's a law that would say so, it probably goes to invasion of privacy. Ask them and get a release, just to be safe.

Re: Photos published on the my website

Gee, you're asking an interesting question. When it's couched as "must," the response can be different from a question asked as "should."

The person who puts the picture on his website "must" have the homeowner's permission if the owner has a right that would be violated by the posting. So the question gets to ... what right does a homeowner have to control the publication of a picture of his house, without identifying the owner or the location?

Now one such right might be a copyright. That kind of thing bit the producers of one of the Batman movies in the tail when they included pictures of someone's yard in the movie. The owner of the yard had given permission, but it turned out that the yard contained a large, identifiable work of sculpture. So who sued? The SCULPTOR. He said that even though he had sold the sculpture, he still owned the COPYRIGHT to the sculpture and had not given permission for its depiction in a movie.

Another right that might be violated is the "right of publicity" owned by a famous person. For example, Dustin Hoffman sued Los Angeles magazine (I think it was called) when it made a composite photo showing him in dressed as a woman a ball gown he had never worn (i.e. it wasn't from Tootsie). I sorta recall that he won the trial but it was reversed on appeal.

The flip side of the right of publicity is the right of privacy. That's violated when you use an identifiable picture of a person in connection with your sales or advertising of your product. Does the right of privacy apply to somebody's home? I haven't ever heard that it does, but I could imagine that some court in a relevant jurisdiction might so hold. If the issue is important to someone's business, it would be prudent to ask a lawyer in the pertinent jurisdiction to research the issue and provide a written opinion that the business would not violate such a right by posting the subject photo(s).