Andrew Tipping v Mark Smith

Facts

The claimant, Mr Andrew Tipping, is a professional photographer of four decades' standing and the co-creator of Max Power, a monthly magazine devoted to performance-tuned and modified cars published between 1991 and 2011 by EMAP and later Bauer Media. He took the photographs at issue for features in the magazine, retaining copyright throughout and licensing them to the publishers for single use in the magazine alone. The defendant, Mr Mark Smith, photographed pages of back issues of the magazine on his mobile phone at home and posted the images, with text, in 716 posts on each of Facebook and Instagram — 1,432 posts in total — between 2018 and 2021 on accounts using the name "maxpowerreunion". The claimant estimated that 31,000 of his photographs were reproduced in the posts on each platform. The defendant used the posts to build a social media following and went on to launch "The Reunion Show", an unofficial Max Power reunion event held at Towcester Racecourse on 5 September 2021 and repeated in 2022, 2023 and 2024, each attracting some 3,000 to 4,000 attendees. The defendant admitted infringement in his defence, and summary judgment was given for the claimant at the case management conference on 22 February 2025, with directions for a trial on quantum.