vizio box with skateboarder

Photo grab and release

Be careful what you sign. You may think you are just going to appear in a local paper, but you may end up plastered all over the packaging for consumer goods. It happened to Benji Galloway, and he ended up on the box of Vizio TV’s.

Here’s the product spotted in the wild at Costco by Danimal. 32″ LCD TV’s. This was back in 2007, and they’ve since moved on to different packaging.
vizio-store

They also used the graphic on their web site.
vizio-web

As well as in brochures.
vizio-brochure2

vizio-brochure

Discussion

8 thoughts on “Photo grab and release

  1. This happened to Patrick Melcher too. A kid told me they saw him on a TV box at Walmart a couple years ago. So, I went to check it out. A picture of Melcher skateing the seawall in Chicago. He was bummed.

  2. It happened to Donny Barley too. Kmart used a photo of him without permission for a t-shirt. I think he won a settlement.

  3. Grover on June 5, 2009 - Reply

    It happened to Brian Mank. He ended up having a frontside invert picture on a sears sweatshirt. He tried to sue. Photo taken at public skatepark = photo of the public = public domain = no money for Mank.

  4. Then Brian had a crappy lawyer, or else he wasn’t recognizable enough. You need a model release to put someone’s likeness on a product that is for sale.

  5. colin on June 5, 2009 - Reply

    this was actually a quick sign for participating in the dew tour i think – where all the photos taken became the property of the dew tour etc.

  6. houseofneil on June 5, 2009 - Reply

    How about the famous Vision sticker/banner? It featured Sean Goff doing a frontside boneless on a ramp, but he was riding a Gator, so everybody just assumed it was Gator because the face was kinda blurry.

  7. Ben Roberts on June 6, 2009 - Reply

    yeah dude this kinda stuff happens to me all the time.. At first it was like ” whoa, im on that box” but i have now gotten used to it

  8. skaterhusseindave on June 8, 2009 - Reply

    Maybe this is a chance for me to be thankful for my uncool stinkbug style. My silhouette won’t help sell shit. ( Mank still has really pretty f/s inverts)

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