Legal Question in Intellectual Property in Pennsylvania

Re: Stolen Internet Image

As a general matter, you automatically own the copyright of your images. You have the right to prevent anyone else from copying any of the images. This right may be enforced in federal court as soon as your copyright in the pertinent image is registered with the Copyright Office.

If your copyright was registered within 90 days of its first publication or at any time before the infringement began, you would be entitled to some remedies that might make it practical to bring a lawsuit for even a single infringement.

Usually the situation you described is resolved without resorting to litigation. A simple letter to the website administrator asking that your copyrighted photograph be removed typically results in the site removing the copy.

I have pursued litigation on behalf of a free-lance photographer who licensed a magazine to use photos for editorial purposes to illustrate stories and then found that the magazine had also used the same photos in advertisements.

Whether such litigation would be cost-effective for you depends on numerous factors that you should discuss confidentially with your own attorney.