Suicidegirls Serves Lithium Picnic Court Papers
According to Philip Warner’s Lithium Picnic Studio news blog, the former Suicidegirls photographer is being sued for “shooting apnea and allegedly operating her www.apneatic.com site.” Presumably, Suicidegirls feels that he has violated the terms of his contract with them and they are therefore taking him to court in Oregon.
On the one hand, he gained a great deal of his popularity and support through shooting content for their site over the years and now it would appear that he’s taking that fanbase and potentially competitive inside information off to start his own thing, which is exactly what a noncompete clause is in place to protect against. On the otherhand, Suicidegirls contracts are notoriously heavy handed when it comes to issues of exclusivity and their terms of noncompete
Obviously, a lot of the details are not available at this time, but we are interested to hear what APN readers thoughts are on the matter. On the one hand, is it fair for a photographer to kickstart his career by taking thousands of dollars and all the access and information a company can give him and then turn around and try to use those resources, including a model that company made popular, to then directly compete with that company, even if that company has made it very clear what their stance on competition is?
On the otherhand, is it fair for a company to only pay a photographer for a few years, benefit greatly from his work during those years, and then demand that no one else ever be able to benefit from that photographer’s work to the point where the photographer is not able to get compensation for taking photographs ever again, not even if he is taking pictures of his own wife?
