CORBIS

Rights and Restrictions Information

Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C., 20540-4730

CORBIS has bought the photographic archives of several wire services, including ACME (which includes Acme News Photos) and United Press International (which includes Pacific & Atlantic; Newspaper Enterprise Association, Inc. [NEA]; International Newsreel; William H. Rau Collection; International News Photos; United Press Photos; and UPI). Any current copyright of images by these services would now be owned by CORBIS. Privacy and publicity rights may also apply.

Access: Permitted; subject to P&P policy on serving originals.

Reproduction (photocopying, hand-held camera copying, photoduplication and other forms of copying allowed by "fair use"): Permitted; subject to P&P policy on copying.

Publication and other forms of distribution: May be restricted. CORBIS controls the copying of wire service images physically housed in its archives in New York City. It does not control the copying of wire services images housed in the Library of Congress. However, any current copyright of images by these services would now be owned by CORBIS. In an attempt to determine if any copyrights were registered and if those copyrights were renewed, Specialists in the Prints and Photographs Division of the Library of Congress searched the Copyright Office files. It was found that only a few images were registered for copyright and those copyrights were not renewed. (the exception the NEA's photographs of the Dionne Quintuplets, which were registered and renewed). However, the Library's legal office has advised the Division that photographs published with proper copyright notices between 1923-1963 may be protected if properly renewed, while works published after 1963 and unpublished photographs in the collection may be protected even if they were not registered with the Copyright Office. Additionally, researchers should be advised that determining the copyright status of photographs can be problematic because of the lack of pertinent information, and researchers often have to make calculated risk decisions concerning the appropriate use of an image when its copyright status is unknown or ambiguous. Privacy and publicity rights may also apply. The address for CORBIS is:

Credit Line: Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, [reproduction number, e.g., [LC-USZ62-12345]

For more information, please read: Copyright and Other Restrictions: ... Sources for Information

Prepared by: Prints and Photographs Division staff. Last revised: 2003