Earlier this week, photographer Keith Pattison accused the Daily Mail of using, without his permission, one of his images for an online article on public funding cuts. Pattison contacted the newspaper's managing editor and picture editors, as well as BJP (see below for BJP's original report on Pattison's case).

Today, in an email sent to Pattison and BJP, Colin Smith, associate picture editor for the Daily Mail, explains that Pattison's image will be deleted from the paper's library as to prevent any other use.

Smith writes: "All I can tell you is that the image was marked in our library as a collect. I will get it deleted this morning. I am sorry about this and can only apologise."

Smith has now asked Pattison to send an invoice to cover the costs of running the image.

While the Daily Mail's admission is a welcome gesture, it raises the issue of the newspaper's library's integrity. According to Elliot Wagland, the Daily Mail Online picture editor, Pattison's image "was picked up by one of our photographers in some form back in 2000 and was placed in our library." Wagland did not elaborate on how the image made it in the newspaper's library, and whether the image had been used in past articles.

In the last six months, BJP has reported on two other cases of the Daily Mail infringing on photographers' copyright.

In one of the most recent cases, the newspaper used an image, shot by photographer Ian Richardson, of Louise Barry, Gareth Barry’s wife. However, on the Mail Online website, the image held a credit for David Hitchins/Capital Pictures.

The photo was a portrait of footballer Gareth Barry's wife, which I took when I attended the Barrys’ wedding as a photographer,” Richardson told BJP at the time. “My wife was the Barrys’ wedding planner and she had placed the photo on her website. The photo on her site carried my copyright details in the IPTC metadata. I noticed when I downloaded the photo from the Mail Online that the IPTC data had been changed to ‘Capital Pictures’.”

However, Richardson didn’t realise his image had been used until it was published, another time, by New magazine, owned by Northern and Shell Media Publications. According to correspondence, seen by BJP, between picture editors at the Daily Mail and Capital Pictures, it appeared that New requested the image from Capital Pictures after seeing it published on Mail Online. When contacted, Capital Pictures was unable to find the image in its archives, advising the magazine to contact the Daily Mail directly.

In an email, also seen by BJP, Phil Loftus of Capital Pictures wrote to the Daily Mail’s online picture editor Elliot Wagland that he “requested a copy of the image from your picture library after seeing the (wrongly) credited image on the Daily Mail website. The library employee asked if I was the copyright holder and I said that the image was credited to us on your website. He said that the image had no metadata but would then credit the image to Capital Pictures.”

After being contacted by Richardson, who informed the library that he was the rightful owner to the picture, Loftus told the Daily Mail’s online picture editor that Capital Pictures was “not the copyright holders and copyright has not been licensed to us. Please remove any attribution to Capital Pictures.”

The image was finally removed several days later, and after BJP intervened, the photographer was paid for the use.

Original article, as published on 22 November 2010:

The Daily Mail has been accused of copyright infringement after a photographer found one of his images used without his permission on the Mail Online website, BJP has been told.

According to photographer Keith Pattison, Mail Online used in a 14 September article one of his images without permission and out of context. The article - Public sector cutbacks could lead to riots, says police chief - shows an image of miners striking at Easington colliery in County Durham in 1984.

In an email sent to BJP, Pattison says: "I came across the illegal use of one of my photographs from Mail Online dated 14 September." He adds: "This is an image taken completely out of context and I would not, under any circumstances, have given permission to the Daily Mail to reproduce it. It would appear from the banding on the right of the image that it has been poorly copied or scanned from a recently published book of my photographs."

Pattison has recently published the book No Redemption, and the image can be seen online here. See screenshots, below, of the Mail Online article that uses Pattison's image.

Mail Online has yet to return BJP's requests for comment.

But, it's not the first time that the Daily Mail's online website has been at the centre of copyright infringement cases. In May, the Daily Mail was forced to admit that it had used images shot by another photographer – Emily James of Just Do It – without authorisation and payment. Mail Online had published three images, posted on TwitPic, depicting people waiting outside of St-Vincent polling station in Dalston.

When James contacted Wagland, the Mail’s online picture editor, asking to be paid for the use, she was told that he couldn't pay "the amount you have requested, [as] these images were taken from twitpic and therefore placed in the public domain." He added: "We are more that happy to pay for the images but we'll only be paying £40 per image."

TwitPic’s terms and conditions clearly state that copyright remains with the images’ owner and that any commercial use must be agreed with the copyright holder.

Speaking to BJP in May, a Daily Mail spokesman was forced to reaffirm that it was not the newspaper's policy "to breach photographers' copyrights," and that it will be "happy to look into individual cases."

And, once again, in June, another photographer came forward after he found one of his images illegally used on the Mail Online website. The image had been shot by photographer Ian Richardson and was used for an article of the wifes and girlfriends of England's football team. However, in this particular case, the Daily Mail had gone one step further by arguing that the images came from stock library Capital Pictures, despites claims of the contrary.

In that case, the Daily Mail once again opted to resolve the matter after BJP contacted the paper's group managing director - Alex Bannister.

BJP will closely monitor Pattison's case, and has contacted Mail Online for comment.