Legal Assistance with Copyright and Photography

Questioner

A nice question? We have been selling a clothing brand from Germany for quite some time. We receive the information for this partly via a b2b portal: this shows the stock, the color, the article number and a picture. A wholesale order can be placed via the B2B. You log in using a secret code, the site is protected and can only be used by buyers. Many, in fact all other brands use these pictures for sale, including on the internet. Now there is 1 brand that suddenly claims the unauthorized use of these images on the B2B site. Question: if one has an active trade relationship and sells products of brand X. Can the buyer (purchasing party) then be prohibited from using the images of this product? I have not found a good source on this yet. But something needs to be said about this. At the moment it seems to us as a form of obstruction, the result is that the sale has been stopped immediately. http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=OJ:C:2010:130:0001:0046:NL:PDF

Lawyer

Question: if one has an active trade relationship and sells products of brand X. Can the buyer (purchasing party) then be prohibited from using the images of this product? Short answer: Yes The creator of a photo has the copyright of it and may decide whether others may use the photo. This does not impede free trade within the EU (which is what you refer to with your link), after all, you can take photos of the clothing yourself and use them on your website, for example. You then have the copyright on those photos.