NEGATIVES, OWNERSHIP OF Questions as to the ownership of the copyright in negatives and the ownership of the negatives themselves constantly arise in professional work. Taking the ordinary case in which a photographer makes, to the order of a customer, a negative and supplies prints from it, the copyright is the customer's, but the negative itself is the property of the photographer, and the latter is free to retain it, destroy it, or apparently do anything with it short of printing from it, enlarging from it, or copying it unless ordered to do so by the customer. (The term " customer " is here synonymous with " sitter," except in cases where the person who remunerates the photographer is not the person who is photographed.) This applies also to all the superfluous and rejected negatives made by the photographer in the course of producing a satisfactory photograph. When such negatives are sold, the buyer acquires the rights held by their maker ; that is, he can do with the negatives as he pleases short of infringing copyright ; in this connection, though, it is of interest to read the article under the heading " Copyright." Naturally, the buyer does not
buy the right to reproduce the negatives, because that right was not possessed by the maker of the photographs ; and no greater title in any property can be conveyed to a second party than was possessed by the first party. The English law has always upheld the photographer in retaining the negatives of photographs supplied ; in one case, for example, the High Court decided that duplicate negatives made by a photographer for the purpose of executing an order for prints, the duplicate negatives being charged to the customer, must remain the property of the photographer.