I recently had a file deactivated by IS because of a copyright issue on the design of a small item appearing in the photo.

I did some research on the item in question and learned that the original design was created in Europe in the early 1950s. According to design patent laws in Europe, all designs that are older than 50 years become public domain and people may freely produce legal replicas and reproductions of the original design without causing any copyright infringement.

In my case, the item in question is in fact a legal replica I believe. However, there is no copyright issue on the design itself of this item as far as I understand since the age of the original design itself already exceeds 50 years.

Has anyone had any similar experiences I am wondering?

Cheers...

It's actually 70 years in Europe:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Duration_Directive
Whatever the case they must have thought there was a risk.
Can you clone the item out?

70 years after the death of the artist.
iStock always errs on the side of caution.
Once when I Scouted an image which had been rejected as copyright though well out of the 70 years pma, the image was accepted but with the cryptic note from Scout that the 70 years rule wasn't the only one they considered, but with no further information.

Quote from: Difydave on November 20, 2010, 04:05

It's actually 70 years in Europe:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Duration_Directive
Whatever the case they must have thought there was a risk.
Can you clone the item out?

70 years after the death of the artist.
But iStock always errs on the side of caution.
Once when I Scouted an image which had been rejected as copyright though well out of the 70 years pma, the image was accepted but with the cryptic note from Scout that the 70 years rule wasn't the only one they considered, but with no further information.

I wish they'd give a bit more info on these sort of things, but the usual answer is that they deal with them as individual cases. I suppose that's fair enough really.
The OP has the right idea by my thinking. If a particular subject is known to be problematic, it's better to move on.

Thanks. The sad thing is the image had been online for some time already before it was deactivated and was getting good downloads. Again, the only way to go is forward from here  

Oh, I hate it when that happens: you can't even send it RM/editorial if it's already sold RF.
Added: in theory you can, if the RM is simply that the buyer is buying rights to use the image, without any guarantee that the image hasn't been used before. Many buyers do buy RM on this basis, but I don't know which, if any, agencies would accept an image, previously sold as RF. Maybe someone can enlighten us?

If you are exclusive with iStock, then you could not do that anyway with an image previously submitted to iStock.

Yes, you can. If it was accepted and hadn't sold any, we can deactivate the file ourselves and send it RM, or if deactivated by iStock, we can also send RM.
However, if a file is rejected on submission, we need to ask CR for permission, which IME has always been granted.
Bizarre, but true.

Quote from: Difydave on November 20, 2010, 04:05

It's actually 70 years in Europe:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Duration_Directive
Whatever the case they must have thought there was a risk.
Can you clone the item out?

70 years after the death of the artist.
iStock always errs on the side of caution.
Once when I Scouted an image which had been rejected as copyright though well out of the 70 years pma, the image was accepted but with the cryptic note from Scout that the 70 years rule wasn't the only one they considered, but with no further information.

-------------------------------
I've run into these issues as well.  For images of illustrations (say from a book), Istock's policy according to Scout is that "illustrations and engravings such as these post 1884 may still be protected by copyright, as we prefer to err on the side of caution, we cannot accept it." 

My take is that while an would be well into public domain in most jurisdictions, its 1) possible there were some jurisdictions that way back when gave longer copyright durations.  If as a copyright holder, you 2) registered your copyright in one of those jurisdictions, you could still potentially be under copyright 3) even if you created your work in the U.S. or a European country you were permitted to register your work in other jurisdictions.  4) the contributor and Istock have no way of knowing if the individual image was registered that way, even though its highly unlikely, so they reject it. 

The thing that kills me is that since this is the policy, why not make it public? 

I found this on wikipedia:

"The functional design and elements of it that were patented by Mies in Germany, Spain and the United States in the 1930s have since expired.[citation needed] The Barcelona chair was manufactured in the US and Europe in limited production from the 1930s to the 1950s. In 1953 van der Rohe ceded his rights and his name on the design to Knoll, knowing that his design patents were expired. This collaboration then renewed popularity in the design.

Knoll claims to be the current licensed manufacturer and holder of all trademark rights to the design.[citation needed] In 1965, Knoll purchased the trademark rights to the Barcelona word from Drexel. In 2004, Knoll received trade dress rights to the design from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Despite these trademarks, a large replica market continues. Gordon International New York has continued to manufacture the designs since the 1970s, even after a court battle against Knoll in 2005.[citation needed] In 2008, another court battle erupted between Knoll and Alphaville Design California; the outcome is pending Summary Judgment in Federal District court.[citation needed]"

Linkhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barcelona_chair

What do you think.