Legality of phone pictures in ads

Question

Let's start with an example: http://weloveastrid.com/

As you can see, their promotional screenshots are surrounded by a picture of an actual hardware - Nexus One in this case. Is the usage, for purely commercial reasons, of those pictures of existing hardware legal? Do I have to ask a manufacturer for permission?

In spirit of the question above, if you've got personal experience with that, how could I get hold of high quality pictures of Android phones?

Answer 1

First off, StackOverflow answers do not consitute good legal advice. :)

My lay opinion of the law is that using images of the phone would be legal, provided that you own the copyright to the images or have permission from the copyright holder to use them in this way.

Consider almost any advertisement for a website, they show the smiling user in a sun-filled room, usually using a specific swanky laptop like an Apple or a Sony. Most of the time the product is not even "debadged". Therefore, I doubt it is a problem.

To get high quality pictures of the hardware, first I would check to see if the manufacturer has a PR section of their website. Often high res, perfect images will be available and the terms of use will be laid out very clearly as part of the download or "media pack".

Failing that, you could look into stock photography collections or would probably need to take your own photos.

Answer 2

I have to repeat the disclaimer from coxymla StackOverflow answers do not consitute good legal advice. :)

I think coxymla is right normally the phone vendors won't care for or have no right to ban you from using their hardware in your advertisement. The only thing you should be careful about is to not associate their hardware with content they would see as bad publicity like porn etc. For that reason some Vendors forbid using their actual products in product promotion of third parties.

My only experience was Apple rejecting an App from the Appstore because we used the the frontal view of the iphone in our promotional video. They don't disliked our product it was a general practice to protect the public image of their Iphone brand.