A photographer has warned you not to use anything Grinch-related in your holiday shoots this year. If you do, he might just come after you and properly ruin your festive season. Well, not the Grinch himself exactly, but Dr. Seuss Enterprises, who owns the copyright and trademark.
Supposedly, shooting a Grinch-themed photo session would infringe on the copyright and could put you at risk of being sued by the company.
Tenessee photographer Brittany Kaye posted on social media that she would not be doing any Grinch-related photo shoots this season because she did not want to get sued. The post attracted a lot of attention and quickly went viral.
Allegedly, Dr Seuss Enterprises employs people at this time of year to do reverse image searches to hunt out professional photographers doing Grinch-themed photo shoots. And then they send them a bill or an invitation to discuss the matter in court.
“So unless you got $120,000 for a license, that’s not a lawsuit you will win!” writes Kaye in the post.
According to The Law Tog, Dr Seuss Enterprises did go on a cease-and-desist rampage in the past, which Petapixel confirmed when a photographer received a letter after an unauthorised Grinch shoot.
And it’s not just the image of the Grinch either. The entire package is trademarked, from the grumpy green fur to the fedora hat to the name, so using the word Grinch in your marketing could be pounced upon as well. Instead, you could try some alternative ideas for shoots that aren’t copyright-protected.
Big corporations sometimes do blanket bans and copyright some truly bizarre things. One photographer had his images taken down by Universal Records after they claimed to have copyrighted the moon!
But getting back to the Grinch, it seems comically fitting. Almost as if Dr Seuss Enterprises doesn’t like spreading the joy of Christmas or something.
[via Petapixel]
