Rod Stewart’s school snap lands singer in copyright row
SIR ROD STEWART has been urged to avoid a copyright court battle over a child photograph by a judge who said: “This has got tears written all over it.”
Sir Rod, 73, has been accused of breaching copyright laws after the picture, taken by a former school friend, was used in his Hyde Park concert in a “self-mocking” display.
The singer was photographed with an unnamed girlfriend in the Sixties by Christopher Southwood, who is said to have passed on the image and copyright to Essex-based photojournalists John and Julia Mclellan in 2004.
The photograph featured in a film montage shown as a backdrop to Sir Rod’s appearance at BBC2’S Live in Hyde Park: A Festival in a Day in 2015.
A pending court case centres on this use, which is alleged to have been unauthorised and in breach of copyright, as Mrs Mclellan is seeking up to £10,000 in damages to split with Mr Southwood. However, District Judge Stephen Hodges, at a hearing yesterday at Chelmsford County Court, urged the singer to avoid a trial because “in terms of the totality of Sir Rod’s lifestyle, it’s a modest claim”. He said: “We cannot make people mediate but I will repeat the encouragement and request. Try and resolve this. I think this has got tears written all over it.”
Neither Sir Rod nor his legal team attended the hearing. A trial date would be set in the small claims court. Mrs Mclellan says she has launched action against Sir Rod after efforts to settle the matter amicably failed.
She claims Mr Southwood gave the then unknown Rod Stewart a copy of the photograph as a keepsake, but adds: “That’s very different from using it commercially.”
It is argued in defence papers that “the court should reject Mrs Mclellan’s claim for an absurd level of damages for a totally innocent, brief and incidental use by Sir Rod of a personal snapshot as part of another, more substantial, artistic work”.
The papers say the image was “innocently used for a few seconds”.