Greek Man Wins Compensation In Yoghurt Pot Case

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21
Jul

An elderly Greek man has been awarded more than £110,000 in compensation after a Swedish dairy used his picture on a yoghurt pot.

The 77-year-old with his long greying moustache and red hat is a distinctive and colourful image depicting the Turkish recipe yoghurt pot.

However the man took exception having his image exploited for commercial reasons, and especially as the case involved a Greek man in traditional dress on a Turkish yoghurt pot, which can be understood against the backdrop of the rivalry and conflict between the two nations going back for centuries.

The man’s photo features on pots of Lindahl Turkish yoghurt, a popular yoghurt in Sweden.

A Greek friend of the man living in Stockholm told the man, Minas Karatzoglis, that his image was being widely distributed throughout Sweden on the pots.

The row has also brewed into a Greek vs. Turkish rivalry in the two countries’ media with the Greek man taking legal action.

The main legal point is that his photo was used without consent,

After discovering his photo had been used without consent, and in this case for commercial use, he was entitled to seek compensation.

The compensation transaction is reportedly between 1.5 million kronor – £110,000 – and 2 million kronor, which includes lawyer fees, the diary has revealed.

“We reached an agreement and everything has been signed by all parties. We can use his picture on all of our products, including on the Turkish yoghurt,” purchase manager for the Lindahl dairy, Tomas Axelsson, said.

The dairy, based in Joenkoeping, Sweden, said the compensation claim came as a shock. The company had bought the photograph in good faith from an image library.

The story shows the legal dangers of using images without permission. Image copyright comes into existence at the point of creation so under normal circumstances the photographer will own the copyright for his or her work.

While there is no general legal requirement to obtain someone’s right to take his or her photograph there are situations where photography can infringe on legal protections though, such as protection of children, national security, privacy laws, etc.

It is quite a complex legal area as many of these situations will have different laws in different countries, with different national laws and regulations. However, it is certainly unethical as well as illegal in many situations to exploit a person’s image without his or her consent. Not knowing you were not doing wrong is no defence.

Basically, ultimately a picture can be taken without permission in most cases, but what is done with it as in this case can lead to legal actions and compensation if the integrity of the image is not protected.

The man says he was not against his face adorning the pots although he was surprised to get a call from a friend informing him. It was more that the yoghurt pot was branding him as Turkish.

“For my client that was perhaps the biggest insult,” his lawyer said, a serious point which shows the sensitivity of national identity in such a case.

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