TRADEMARK NOTICE

Wild Horizons® is our official Trademark and Service Mark registered with the United States Patent and Trademark Office. It has been in continuous use in interstate and international commerce since 1985. Print and electronic media and media services in the fields of nature and photography are covered by our multiple registrations. Advertising or distributing products or services using our company name is strictly prohibited by law.

WILD HORIZONS® COPYRIGHT & TERMS OF USE

Our wildhorizons.com website contains images, text, and designs which are protected by United States and International Copyright Laws, with All Rights Reserved. Photography is our business, so please respect our ownership of the content on this website. None of our images fall in the Public Domain. We ask that you do not modify, copy, reproduce, re-publish, upload, post, transmit, or distribute any material from this website. Violators will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.

SOME COPYRIGHT LAW BASICS

  • Copyright laws were designed to protect the livelihood of creative people. Stealing work that another person has created is no more ethical than walking into a shoe store to steal a pair of shoes that you’ve taken a liking to.
  • The moment a photograph or other work is created, it is given legal protection under U.S. Copyright Laws; and everyone should respect the owner’s/creator’s ownership rights. In short, if you didn’t create the work, e.g. take the photograph, you have no legal right to use it without permission from its creator, even if you don’t know who he/she is. But we all know that chasing violators can be laborious and expensive. That’s why other levels of protection have been put into place by the Copyright Office.
  • Works that are officially Registered with the U. S Copyright Office allow their creators to collect “Statutory Damages” for violation of their ownership rights. Such infringements can carry penalties up to $150,000 per work (e.g. per photo) plus court costs.
  • Anyone tempted to remove visible watermarks on an image should think twice. Intentionally removing the creator’s ownership marks without his/her permission entitles the owner to collect for Statutory Damages, even if the image has not been officially Registered with the Copyright Office.
  • For tutorials on registering your own photographic work and extensive discussion of Copyright Law, visit the American Society of Media Photographers website or consult the Copyright Office directly.

PERMISSIONS

Please CONTACT us if you wish to use any of our images or other content on this website, but FIRST read our guidelines below.

  • We license images on a Rights Managed basis. The greater the exposure an image will receive, the higher our fees. We work hard and purchase state-of-the-art photographic equipment and computer hardware/software to make, process, and deliver our images, so please don’t ask for freebies. We are, however, open to TRADE for goods or services of special interest to us. We have no interest in trading the use of our images for a “credit line.” We attempt to work within everyone’s budget.
  • Publishers and their picture researchers may freely download images for review purposes only, e.g. the preparation of “comps” for in-house discussion.
  • Please do not ask for special discounts unless you are an all-volunteer organization. If you pay writers, graphic designers, or editors for their contributions, photographers deserve fair pay as well.
  • If we agree to support your cause, we will usually allow free use of our images, assuming that we are given proper credit.
  • You do not need permission from us to share one of our low-resolution images with a friend, to use it on your desktop as a screensaver, or to print a small copy for a classroom project or your personal enjoyment. This does not include the right to reproduce or distribute multiple copies of our images without written authorization from us.
  • We are flattered when our images are shared with others on Twitter and some of the other social networking sites, IF, and only if, the service provider retains our ownership information with hot-links back to our website. Keep in mind that most photo-sharing sites strip ownership/contact metadata from images during upload to their website, a very bad practice! Visit the Controlled Vocabulary Forum for a discussion and on-going survey of this problem.
  • If your questions are not answered here, please contact Thomas Wiewandt