The Associated Press and Corbis Images are set to sharing more than 10 millions images from their respectives catalogues covering "an unparalleled range of breaking news, sports and entertainment, archival and creative images," in a "comprehensive cross-dsitribution partnership" announced today.

The move comes eight years after Getty Images and Agence France Presse signed a similar deal.

Under their partnership, which is limited to the United States at the moment, AP Images, the commercial photo licensing division of The Associated Press, will make available thousands of breaking news, sports, and entertainment images each day and more than five million archival photos to Corbis' clients.

In return, Corbis will also make five million of its creative, documentary, archival, fine art and current events images available for distribution by AP.

In a statement, AP president and CEO Tom Curley says: "Putting together AP's award-winning collection of breaking news and other editorial photography with Corbis' extraordinary collection of creative and historical imagery provides a perfect marriage of choice for our customers."

Corbis' CEO Gary Shenk adds: "Corbis believes in the future of the media business, and our partnership with The Associated Press marks another major milestone in our company's commitment to providing customers with the most compelling and differentiated content offering in the market today."

Under the agreement, and taking into effect in October, Corbis images will be available on AP Images' portal, www.apimages.com, and AP photographs will be available on the Corbis website at www.corbisimages.com.