Legal questions about stock photo
Interestingly, I received an email from Alamy this morning that said:
We have been contacted by Merck and Co about this image. We initially explained that the images in question would be acceptable for editorial uses however Merck have responded to this to say that the images depict packaging and counterfeit medication not manufactured by them and therefore is not legitimate representation of their product, Molnupiravir event when depicted in an editorial context.
They claim that this could lead to misinformation on the part of the public who could be led to purchasing counterfeit medication as a result of the images being used in news media which they say is a huge public safety risk and have asked for the images to be removed as a result.
Given this latest information we have removed the images in line with the request from Merck to prevent any issues. If you believe the images identified in your collection to be genuine Merck & Co products and would like to discuss keeping the images online, please let us know and we can place Merck & Co in touch with you
Somehow I don’t think I want to take on Merck’s lawyers with this question, but to suggest that someone could see this obviously “made-up” prescription bottle and then try to buy some counterfeit medication that looks like this is a massive leap! Methinks they perhaps prefer journalists to use their own marketing images of the drug rather than anything else!
I changed the title on Shutterstock to now read “Concept of a prescription bottle and capsules illustrating trials…”
Interesting.
many thanks for sharing this Steve. Good luck with this image further.
The bigger question is…why do you need the Merck name and logo in it. Companies aggressively protect their trademarked name. The look of the drug is really immaterial since it is very generic and lacks specific corporate identification on the capsules or label. Change the background to something else.
Not sure you are getting the rationale here. Journalists are writing about the status of each company’s drugs and whether they have been approved etc. So they need to see the company name to tie into the story. I do agree that there might be a market for a generic Covid drug, but I think it is much smaller than the one for branded images. I created a series of covid vaccination shots with each different developer (including the Chinese and Russian versions) and they sell because they illustrate stories about those companies.
Thank you Steven for sharing your story, but I agree with Larry, clients and authors aggressively protect their merchandise, so either you have the original product and list their names or better not to publish it at all in my opinion because sooner or later they will go after you. I always edit out logos and tradwmarks from my images where visible.
But this is an editorial image and can only be used as editorial. They aren’t complaining about the use of their logo, but about the fact that the tablets aren’t theirs. Note that I didn’t claim they were theirs either so they came up with the public safety argument.