dakman - 11:11 am on Mar 28, 2006 (gmt 0)

As a designer I've never thought of this before... I use stock images all the time in various design projects...

I was reading some articles about how trademarks and copyrights can and do exist inside images themselves and you can be liable for trademark/copyright infingement having them in an image..

Example: you can't use a picture of an Coke bottle (even if it doesnt say coke just the look of it), Harley, or even a picture of the Eiffel tower at night, there are some buildings that are trademarked like the Transamerica building..

What I don't get is doesn’t virtually every stock photo have a trademarked design/product in it? (examples: mp3 players, cell phones, etc of popular brands are in many of my stock photos that I buy from various stock photo sites on the net)

Does that make us all potential victims of some company with fat pockets that could sue us saying we are diluting or using images of their trademarked products in our photos?

Another Example… lets say I used a stock photo of some business professional… aren't the persons clothes, apparel, shoes cell phone aren’t those all trademarked (the design /tradedress of the objects themselves)?

How would I know whether or not the owner of any objects has a trademark/copyright or would try to sue me if I used one of their photos of one of their products? (even if its unbranded)

I've seen stock photos of PDA's that I can totally identify as a "Palm" product or even cell phones that you can recognize as "Motorola" products

How could someone like myself or any other designer that uses stock photos, live with the potentiality that a company could say your infringing a trademark or copyright by having one of its trademarked items in a stock photo promoting your sites products/services?

What do you guys think?