Photos From a Previous Web Designer's Stock Licence

Photos nobody can account for

Many small business websites carry photographs chosen by a designer who is no longer involved: a smiling team that is not the team, a gleaming workshop that is not the workshop.

Some were bought from stock libraries, some came free from somewhere, and nobody now knows which.

That matters when a letter arrives from a photographer or an image agency, identifying a photo on your site and asking for payment.

What follows is practical housekeeping, not legal advice. The work that makes such a letter easier to answer, or prevents it, can start this week.

Where a site's photos come from

• Bought by the designer on their own stock account.
• Bought by you, with a receipt somewhere in old email.
• Free photo sites with conditions most people never read.
• Image search results copied without any licence at all.
• Preview images used as placeholders and never replaced.
• Your own photos, the only ones with no question attached.

The first causes the most trouble, because it looks settled. The photo was paid for, but the licence, the receipt and the account all belong to someone else.

A licence belongs to whoever bought it

Stock photos are licensed, not sold. The buyer gets permission to use an image under stated conditions, and the licence names who that buyer is.

Some licences let a designer buy on behalf of a client, or transfer the licence afterwards. Others cover only the designer's own use, or a single project.

Either way, the proof usually sits in the designer's stock account. When the relationship ends or the account closes, the business is left using images it cannot show it has the right to use.

How the letters arrive

Photographers and agencies use software that searches the web for their images and lists every site using them.

A match with no licence on record produces a letter asking for a fee for past use, often more than the licence would have cost, with a deadline attached.

Removing the photo stops further use but does not by itself settle the question of past use. Do not ignore the letter, and take advice on it.

A worked example

An industrial cleaning company that cleans tanks, ducts and production lines in factories and food plants had a site built six years ago by a designer who has since retired.

Most of its photos were stock: workers in protective suits, a spotless stainless-steel line, a pressure washer in action. The company cannot photograph inside clients' plants, so stock had seemed the only choice.

Then a letter arrived on behalf of a photo agency, identifying the image on the services page and asking for a fee covering several years.

The mechanism was who held the paperwork. Whatever licence the designer bought sat in an account that no longer existed, and the company had no receipt, no licence and no record of the source.

The company took legal advice on the letter, then went through every image on the site and removed the stock it could not document.

The replacements were its own trucks, equipment and crews in the yard, plus a few finished jobs photographed with a client's written permission. Any stock it buys now goes on its own account.

List every image on the site

Go through the site page by page and list every photograph, including banners, backgrounds and the small images in sidebars.

For each, note whether you took it, bought it or do not know. A reverse image search, such as Google's search by image, often shows where a photo first appeared and whether it belongs to a stock library.

Anything that turns up on stock sites, or on many other businesses' pages, is not your own photo, whatever anyone remembers.

Ask the previous designer

If the designer is reachable, ask politely for the licence records for the images on your site: invoices, licence certificates or download histories.

Many designers keep these for years and will send them. Ask at the same time whether any of the licences can be transferred to the business.

Keep whatever arrives, even if it covers only some of the photos.

Replace what cannot be documented

An image with no record of a licence is a risk for as long as it stays on the site.

Replace those images, most prominent first: the home page banner, then the service pages, then everything else.

Your own photographs are the safest replacements and usually the most persuasive. Where a stock image is still the right choice, license it again on the business's own account, in its own name.

Keep a register

A simple spreadsheet settles the question for the future: the file name, where it is used, where it came from, the licence type, the licensee and where the proof is kept.

Add a row whenever an image goes on the site. It takes a minute then, and saves hours of searching later.

Before the next designer starts

Write image ownership into the agreement with whoever builds or maintains the site.

Stock should be licensed in the business's name, or transferred to it, and the licence records handed over with the site's files at the end of the project.

Ask the same of photographers: what the business may do with their photos, for how long, and whether that changes when the site is rebuilt.

The counter-case

A site built entirely from the business's own photographs has none of this to do, and a designer who kept careful records may have every licence ready to send.

Not every stock photo needs replacing either. One with a documented licence in the right name can stay for as long as its terms allow.

A letter about a specific image is a question for a lawyer. For everything else, document what you can and replace what you cannot.

Before a letter arrives

1. List every image on the site.
2. Mark the ones you took yourself.
3. Search the rest by image.
4. Ask the previous designer for licence records.
5. Replace anything you cannot document.
6. License new stock on your own account.
7. Keep a register of every image.

Step four is the cheapest step on the list and the one most often skipped out of awkwardness. One polite email can turn a page of unknown photos into documented ones, and nobody else holds those records.

Another check on what a site may publish is covered in testimonials in a regulated profession.

Frequently asked questions

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.