Was it a Samsung? If so all Samsung designs are trademarked, and although I haven't checked I'd imagine some other manufacturers are probably the same.

The Samsung phones fall under Design Patents, in addition to the regular trademark/logo stuff.

Samsung Phones
All Samsung cellular phones have design patents on them. Here are some example patents:
D528,096
D528,092
D527,716
D528,096
D528,092


Source link

http://www.imagecatalog.com/copyright_and_trademark.php

I have no affiliations with imagecatalog site - just have the link bookmarked.

I don't quite understand the "faving" at 123. Form things I have read hear, I thought you cauld "fave" images and it would help you out, but when I look it seems to fave photographers. Can someone give me some insight? Thx!

Out of town wedding 1998 - 300 mile drive. Had all camera gear. Forgot all luggage. Clothes, toiletries, etc. Small town, but luckily it had one of the "mart" stores that was open so was able to get shampoo etc, and even a decent yet cheap dress and shoes for the festivities.

My packed clothing bag was smaller than some of the gear bags, and I just missed it on the way out.

Camera disasters? I've been very lucky. One strobe disaster on a shoot, but was not familiar with the new gear. So that's a mistake I promised myself not to let happen again.

I used to have a corporate account on istock for a company I did work for. We chose istock because of the easy ability to add credits when needed and the general overall quality. Not being "regular downloaders" we didn't want to get sucked into subscription plans we would never fully utilize.

Here is a short list of things I bought. Note that these are "specific" searches as opposed to flowers & sunsets & stuff. In case some of you wonder what some buyers look for.

Oil platform - style of the platform mattered

A certain type of cell tower (it was the construction method in the tower that was important - only one style would work)

5 year old (approximate age) smiling clean cut blond boy wearing a red shirt, looking straight at camera, isolated on white (as if he was about to play with toys). In the image, I needed to comp in a new toy prototype. Found exactly what I wanted on istock.
 
Workboat or barge with railing

One of those red UK phone booths on white or one I could easily cut

Particular shot of Canada Flag. I needed a sort of a slightly downward view to comp into an image to replace a USA flag. Was hard to find - that's why I have a problem with reviewers who say "too many of this". If they are good, never too many.

A vintage toaster

Single knife and fork vertical aspect - wish it would have been shot on black with proper studio lighting, but took the isolated on white and fixed it.

Good looking raw steak

A cello wrapped gift basket - was for web so contents did not matter too much. Fluffy cellophane wrapping and big bow were what mattered. Had to change color of bow.

Antarctica blue water, blue sky, and icebergs

Pile of diamonds or CZs (no luck on that one - they were all crap on every service - wound up hooking up with a gem broker and shooting them myself)

About 90% of the needs were fulfilled by istock during the course of my relationship with  this client. This started about 2005.  The money didn't matter much as long as what I needed was available.  We looked at Shutterstock, but at that time, once you got past the first 3 or 4  pages, you really started seeing "the crap" and we decided against it.Quality much better overall now, and at every service.

DItch the B&W buildings - big waste of time. Ditch the 6 versions of a building - bigger waste of time. If no one buys version 1, it is likely that sales will be non existent or paltry on versions 2 thru 6.

You need desperate help on keywording. Putting "beautiful" or Beautiful Alyssa in the title is useless. And in this one here, you don't even have WOMAN in the keywords. You have "women". There is only one in the pic so an immediate toss on the part of the buyer.

http://www.luckyoliver.com/photo/6901817/beautiful

The search engines key on titles, ever for LO. Get the subject into the title instead of the models names. Also in the above link you have Evanston. Who cares. The beach is nondescript and does not depict Evanston IL. Stay with what is specific to the photo.

You have access to lovely ladies, but have no eye for microstock. Put one of these girls on the beach when it warms up in jeans and a Tshirt using a laptop. Sitting, laying down on stomach, even carry laptop walking down the beach. Shoot morning for cool blues instead of late in day warm tones. These will sell.

You have a decent eye for the models, but even so you need to back it off and compose differently for stock to give some more copyspace. Some of what you posted would be better for Getty that for micro, but even then, need to back off and keep the hands out of the hair. Hands in hair too 1950s cliche unlese the setting and intent of the photo absolutely calls for it.

More color overall. Although I agree that some (a few) BW can only truly be processed by the photograper to bring about the full intent of the photo, really, leave it to the editors and graphic artists.

Well just a few things. I could go on but this should give you a start.

If you really want to make some microstock money, start shootng everyday objects on white seamless, or food. Boring yes, but if you keep going the way you are, you'll continue to languish.

3 sales on Shutterstock for me today and it's a Sunday and it's early (plus I only have a gallery of 18 so far - just got accepted Fri)- one is a real estate for sale sign with blank placard and clipping path, one is a chocolate splash, and one is a plain cube gift box an white with a gold loopy bow. That's the kind of stuff that sells. These have done well on other micro sites as well.

People sell, especially women. Just shoot it differently for micros. Pretty Plain Jane, happy mom with shopping bag, stuff like that. Better yet, happy blond mom jeasns and T shirt with canvas bag with recycle logo on it, If this offends all of your photographic sensibilities, well, that's the way it goes.

Alamy - kind of hard to say what goes there, but I would really check your keywording there. The Alamy Rank these days is kind of fickle. I have had a few sales there but believe it or not they have been fractal art.

On the Getty comment - did I say you were good enough? Not really. A couple of the shots are. On PhotoShelter - a few of these may go, not many though. PS is kind of brutal in their editing. The BW buildings probably won't fly there.

You might have problems here. See this thread

http://www.microstockgroup.com/index.php?topic=336.msg7683

I am doing some research on this site right now. It does deem that some dirt is appearing. Will update if I find anythng of worth.

Well what I have been finding is that some of these unknown stock sites are neing used for credit card fraud and most likely money laundering. Here is another story from a consumer who was erroneously charged

http://community.ca.com/blogs/securityadvisor/archive/2008/02/11/the-face-of-credit-card-fraud-and-what-you-can-do.aspx

The Pictureglubus site metioned here is no longer in service, thank goodness.

So just one more time - DO YOUR HOMEWORK begore signing

I posted some commentary to my blog and put out a Twitter alert which brought some traffic in. Seeing this (especially the initial post) just annoyed . out of me last nite, and I just couldn't let it go.

As far as pursuit and trying to get compensation, every photog who got sucked into this is unfortunately sort of between a rock and a hard place. On the part of the photogs, well you weren't asked for any cash. If it was the case of "photogs, pay $.25 each image for guaranteed approval" well then there might be a case if sales were logged against a photo. But it is more of a case of breach of contract with international implications and hard to prosecute, because contract laws will vary fro country to country, and here even from state to state. It would be interesting for me to see their Terms of Service - if anyone would like to post feel free. Because this place is scum, I will not even open a dummy account to get them. I think the contributor terms are buried past the signup.

As far as copyrighted images being held hostage, well probably a lot who posted there do not have images registered with appropriate gov't entitities, so no real recourse there. The claims of infringement or misuse would be nebulous at best, because the photog did in fact agree to Terms, and buried in some of the language I saw, the submittor did in fact agree to a quasi redistribution scheme of sorts.

I found more dirt on this whole thing last nite. One of the things I found was the suspicious link offs from some of those scam "Work At Home" sites, so there might be something there.


The real unfortunate thing here is that this place has successfully preyed on the meek. People who posted there in hope of a few bucks were those who stumbled upon this by chance, looked at those "work at home" sites, or got shellshocked from 5 time shutterstock and istock rejections. Also unfortunate is that there could be a "ringer" in some of those submitted photos, meaning one that could really sell. The internet promises of the make money is just plain cruel - it's like kicking puppies and laughing.

It is really buyers who got sucked into the "download package" who would be most effective in triggering some kind of action, escpecially if fraudalent charges start appearing on credit cards. See related post

http://www.microstockgroup.com/index.php/topic,4045.msg39424

Even though this stockphotospot is from all facets scam, when you look at the nitty gritty legal as it applies to the stock industry, you would not be able to offer exclusive rights on the major services because they cannot be deleted from the stockphotospot service. Because the images submitted are tied up in this scam operation, who knows where they will wind up. The good ones could wind up on a photo CD on EBay - worse yet, family pics could wind up where you really don't want them to. This might be an unfortunate live and learn lesson for those who got lured into stockphotospot, while the owner is laughing all the way to the bank and has since probably suckered more people into more scams.

Anyway, I am going to keep this alive on my blog, and will be doing some more research to see where this can go, if anywhere. Right now in my thinking of which routes can be taken, legally almost everything with regards to pursuit is a dead end, mainly because this is crossing international boundaries, and the offended parties are in various jurisdictions, plus the fact that the only vocal complaints I can find are the photogs, and there is no cash loss by them. A "promise of payment" cannot be construed as a cash loss - it is just breach of contract.. The principal has cloaked him or herself in enough anonymity to make this hard for the average person to persue, yet not meaty enough for any law or government agency to take it on. One hope is that maybe I can get the attention of a good reporter who is interested enough in the story as it relates to the work at home scams, part of the angle being of course how easily the meek get sucked in.

I also have a few more internet searches up my sleeve. Will keep you posted on anything new that I find.

And here is one just for good measure, right from their photo inventory. Unfortunately it is not likely that the interested newbie will stumble on this and they'll just start uploading photos.

http://www.stockphotospot.com/stockphotospot-never-paid-me-for-this-photo-dont-buy-sedona-arizona-red-rock-county-red-rock-scam-sexy-stock-photo-a56042-41.html

Ok done with my rant. I have contacted the OP via email asking him to check this thread.

As far as pursuit of the situation, the only thing that "may" work here is the internet white collar crime division of the FBI. And that is really may work only if the USA buyers gets ripped.  Because the screwed photogs are global, it gets harder to pursue.

I don't know if this is big enough for the FTC to get involved, and then again, it would really have to involve money transactions, not just data transfers.
 

Sorry but this just got me going. In addition to various previous posts on this forum, also see this link

http://www.northeastfoto.com/forums/showthread.php?t=6538

Here's an excerpt:

They also have a "Special Offer Expires: June 21, 2007 @ 11 PM CST. Normally $159.95/yr." but the expiry date is always changing - so I'm afraid they are trying to rip buyers as well as photographers.

I had made a mental note to ceck and see if it was a changing date - apparently my suspicions were correct.

And here's the best link from their own board

http://www.stockphotospot.com/do-not-purchasescam--stock-photo-a37297-54.html

Thx Tre - I will take some snippets and will write a little article in the next few days. My blog is still under development, but it does get some good casual traffic.

Not allowing deletion or at least disabling of images is simply bad business. If exclisive rights are sold elsewhere, you are screwed. Yeah, gey the word out on these guys.

Can post some of your text to my blog? will help get the word out a bit.

In the meantime, I am going to tale a look at their terms etc. Won't even do a trial "joke join" hough because god only knows where my personal info will wind up. Will post anything interesting that I find.

Good note on trying the risky ones when you are new. To be successful in the long run, you need to do a lot of industry analysis and ask a lot of questions. Unfortunately, those feeling the sting of 5 tome shutterstock rejections may go this route.