On a sunny day in April 2019, photographer Jack Schroeder and model Britni Sumida took a shiny white Volvo S60 out into the Southern California desert for a test shoot amid a superbloom of bright orange poppies. He took about a thousand images and posted a handful to Instagram, tagging Volvo and capturing the automaker’s attention. The company posted a comment asking to share the photos and encouraging him to respond with the hashtag #YesVolvoUSA to accept.
“It’s like they haven’t read the terms of service that they selectively quote from,” says attorney Stephen Doniger, who is representing photographer Elliot McGucken in a copyright infringement suit against Newsweek over its use of an embedded Instagram post.
Schroeder and Sumida’s attorney Jeffrey Gluck warns that, if Volvo’s argument succeeds, it won’t just affect photographers and other creators who share their work on the site — even family pictures posted by ordinary people.
Great photo of model and car.
This is not a difficult case at all. The photographer is going to win