UpperCut goes Live . . .

Stock Asylum Staff Report
August 1, 2005

Following more than a year of development, a new rights-managed stock photography distributor has published its web site with more than 12,000 new images.

UpperCut Images, the latest offering from stock industry veteran Miles Gerstein, is being positioned as a high-end commercial brand with an artistic flair.

With work from photographers like Sean Kennedy Santos, David Maisel, Dennis Welsh, Darryl Estrine and others, UpperCut offers a general collection with all the usual categories from business to lifestyle, travel to still life.

The new web site is in a "soft-launch" phase, said Benjamin Winters, creative developer for the new stock agency. Companies often preview ( or soft-launch ) web sites with little fanfare, giving the technical people time to work out kinks before the official unveiling. Winters said the official launch will occur in September amidst a barrage of advertising.

UpperCut launches with a slightly new take on rights management.

Though all rights-managed distributors track the usage histories of their images, few offer free "rights protection." If a license buyer is concerned that a competitor might use the same image, the buyer must purchase rights protection for an additional fee, limiting the sale of future licenses for the same image.

UpperCut offers minimal rights protection with all image licenses. Dubbed "spot exclusivity," the company promises it will not license an image twice for use in the same industry, in the same location, during the same time frame, in the same medium.

For example, a mobile phone company licensing an image for a brochure distributed during April in New York would not have to worry about another cell phone company using the same image in a brochure dispersed in the Big Apple during the same period.

However, it should be noted that "spot exclusivity" would allow UpperCut to license the same image for use on a competing mobile phone company's billboard in downtown Manhattan during April. As with all rights-managed stock distributors, the original license buyer could pay a premium to prohibit the billboard use.

In addition to UpperCut's rights-managed offer, the new web site also includes some 700,000 royalty-free images from the PunchStock web site. PunchStock is a portal also owned by Gerstein.

UpperCut's launch had been planned for the first quarter of this year, but was put off because the company wanted to start with a stronger collection.

 

UpperCut Images can be found at: http://www.uppercutimages.com

PunchStock is at: http://www.punchstock.com