We get asked a lot by Customers if they can use our product photographs, so we thought we would declare our policy and give some background on the law.

Copyright Ownership

The act of creation makes the copyright for a piece of work yours - You don't have to register it, the act of creation itself is what counts. Neither do you need to display a copyright statement (although it may be sensible for clarity).

So, it is always wise to assume that everything you see or read on the internet is owned by someone and just because there is no copyright statement doesn't mean you can use it stand-alone or in any derivative works.

As far as the Internet is concerned, copyright is applicable to all content forms and media (text, images, video, music, scripts, code etc.) no matter how it is stored or rendered.

How long is Copyright valid?

The answer is a long time. It varies from country to country but in the UK, copyright is valid for 70 years after the death of the author.

Our Policy

As you might expect, the copyright for all content on our site is vested in us (actually our parent company; CometX Limited) but we are happy to allow our Customers to use our product imagery for any products they buy from us, on their own websites for the purposes of selling those products and so long as they remain Customers of ours (we define a customer as any trader who has purchased directly from us within the past 3 months). This dispensation is granted on the understanding that they cannot and do not claim copyright for any of our work.

Customers may not under any circumstances pass on a licence to any 3rd party to use any of our imagery and as a condition of use, Customers must include the following statement on their website in a reasonably prominent position (normally it would form part of your own copyright statement):

"Some of the images we display on our site have been provided under licence by our supplier(s) and are protected by copyright law. No images may be copied and used elsewhere in any media for any purpose whatsoever, without the specific written permission of the original copyright holder."

Customers do not necessarily need to cite us by name as the copyright holder but they must make it clear to their visitors that any images of ours they use are not to be copied. We would advise that customers protect their own intellectual property in a similar manner.

NB: The dispensation applies only to Product images (not product descriptions) and only for those products which are obtained directly from us. Once a trader ceases to be a customer (see definition above), all of our images must be immediately removed from your site and literature. Images may not be used on any site which in any way could be construed as as passing itself off as any of the CometX Limited sites.