While Picscout has been a leading innovator in image-recognition technology, its business is not to help people find images. It’s to help them manage their copyrights. If you’re thinking that you could use Google’s new image-search to do that on your own, consider these points:

FINDING YOUR IMAGES

• First you have to get Google image search to come up with one of your images in a search (not as easy as it looks), before you can even start with a “similar” search. And then your luck goes downhill faster. As reported by Plagiarism Today, the search isn’t really all that good. But, that’s almost beside the point. Even if it were perfect at finding exact matches, you have to do this for every image you own, one by one. Do you really have that much time on your hands?
• Picscout tracks entire collections of works… Every day.

FINDING “RELEVANT” USAGES

• Do you know the difference between a “relevant” use of your images and a big waste of time?
• Picscout does. And we deliver detailed reports that include the name of the company, a screenshot of the web page that used your image, contact information, and more.

RESOLUTIONS

• Do you know what to do if you find a match? Most people have no expertise or wherewithal to resolve usage disputes. If you try to contact the company yourself, chances are that you’ll be either ignored or treated poorly. And you’ll discover this only after weeks or months of trying.
• Picscout works with a select network of specially qualified copyright lawyers that can not only handle your case professionally with the other party, saving you valuable time, but also come up with a satisfactory resolution that doesn’t alienate business relationships.

Sure, there are ways to “find” your images, ranging from dumb luck to brute force searching. But that doesn’t mean a whole lot if nothing is happening. In the end, Picscout is far more than just a great image-recognition tech company. We provide full-service solutions that actually return results.

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This panel will discuss techniques buyers can use to track down images and what agencies can do to make it easier.

Jeff Downey, Director of Sales and Business Development at PicScout, will present in this session which will take place on Saturday, April 18, 2009, at 4 PM at the Millennium Knickerbocker Hotel.  Chicago is Jeff’s hometown and he is a White Sox fan in case you wondered.

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Together, ImageSpan and PicScout also are addressing a huge and growing problem: online image theft. Lost revenues from unauthorized uses of images online are estimated at upwards of $65 million, according to a comprehensive study by the Stock Artists Alliance. By combining PicScout’s market-leading image tracking and recognition registry services with ImageSpan’s Web-based LicenseStream licensing and royalty settlement service, the partners can provide LicenseStream subscribers with a view into where and how their images are being used online.  The exclusive three-year agreement calls for PicScout to be the exclusive image tracking service and image registry service for all content provided to it by ImageSpan and covers mutual customers in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom.

“PicScout is proud to partner with ImageSpan and to combine our complementary services: the ImageSpan LicenseStream service and PicScout’s Image Tracker,” said Offir Gutelzon, CEO and co-founder of PicScout. “Image Tracker’s reports will enable both photographers and enterprises to create more sales opportunities which can be monetized by the LicenseStream remedy tools.  In addition, LicenseStream customers will have access to our Image Registry which solves the problem of unidentified copyrighted images or orphan works.”

Please see the entire PR on our website: read more

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VDZ is a German organization of 400 publishers together producing more than 3,000 titles. The Israel Export & International Cooperation Institute also sponsored the event and helped scout out innovative Israeli companies in the digital media and software space.

The summit hosted young and innovative companies from Israel and USA among of them were companies like Kaltura, Clicktale, Tvinchi, Dapper and PicScout which showecased their company and solutions for the digital media market.

I was amazed to see how the traditional print industry is seeking for help and innovation in order to leverage their brand into the digital world. We were sharing how their evolution to online from print was similar to the evolution stock agencies had moving from 35mm to e-commerce websites.

Next month I will speak at the American Bar Association’s Annual Intellectual Property Law Conference which will discuss how emerging technologies, like the PicScout’s ImageTracker, can solve problems relating to “orphan works”.

Offir Gutelzon

(Picture from Raphael Mizrahi’s Facebook Album)

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We also had an important addition to our team – Jeff Downey, our new Director of Sales & Business Development is based in Chicago. His experience spans startup companies as well as market leaders like Getty Images. We will be adding more members to our Marketing and Sales Team in January- we will update you shortly.

The PicScout team is looking forward to a successful year for the company and our customers and partners in 2009, with a new technological solution that will bridge the gap between the image owner/ licensor and the image user to create more efficient processes from image selection to licensing to renewals.

We also look forward to continuing to provide great service and solutions to all of our loyal customers and partners and welcoming more new customers to PicScout.

I would like to thank the wonderful PicScout Team for a great 2008-Let’s work together to make 2009 even better.

Offir Gutelzon , CEO, PicScout

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