Missing Media Credit?
Negotiate an agreement before they publish your work

by Gregory Hancks, AIA
AIA Associate General Counsel

Summary: Many firms complain about the print media publishing images, both photographs and renderings of projects, without giving appropriate credit for the photos or renderings. Alerting the reporter or publisher after the fact often proves to be futile, so a better strategy is to reach an agreement up front. The matter primarily involves copyright law, which provides a direct means for an architecture firm to protect its own interests.

Negotiation and agreement
Typically, an architecture firm owns the copyright in the drawings and renderings it produces for a project (although the firm could transfer ownership to the client in the owner/architect agreement). In addition, a photographer owns the copyright in any photos he or she takes. If an architecture firm’s employee takes project photos, however, the firm will generally own the copyright in those photos.

When a firm provides project images (drawings or photos) to the news media, the firm could require the recipient to sign an agreement that states the terms under which the images may be used, such as a credit line and copyright notice. The agreement might also require the firm’s name be mentioned in the article itself, although reporters may not want to consent to that requirement. This is, in any event, a matter for negotiation and agreement between the firm and whoever receives the images.

Some suppliers have standard contracts
The major commercial photo suppliers, such as Getty Images and Corbis, have standard contracts under which they sell the right to use their photos and establish requirements for credit and copyright notices whenever those images are published. Those photo suppliers’ standard terms and conditions are available for review on their Web sites.

In some circumstances, it is the project owner or developer who provides the architecture firm’s images to the news media for publication. To ensure that those images are published with appropriate credit, the architecture firm needs to discuss the issue with the client early in the project and, where appropriate, include a provision on the subject in the owner/architect agreement.