For a founder selling or closing a store
Selling my ecommerce business: the product images inside it
Updated
When an online store is sold or wound down, its photographs usually travel as an afterthought. Years of consistent packshots can be licensed in their own right, whether the business is trading, closing or changing hands.
Three ways the images can be dealt with
A trading business can license the catalogue while it keeps selling. A company that is closing can sell its image library as an asset: its directors decide until a winding-up petition is presented to the court or a liquidator is appointed (after a petition, a sale is void if the court winds the company up, unless it orders otherwise), and the liquidator decides after that, as an administrator does in an administration; nothing is left to sell once it is dissolved, because what it owned passes to the Crown. A broker or adviser who works with ecommerce sellers can introduce such companies and share in the fee. The form asks where the business stands today.
Check what the platforms already hold
Store builders such as BigCommerce, Shopify and Squarespace leave ownership with the merchant, while marketplaces take a licence instead: BigCommerce's agreement says "You retain ownership of all intellectual property rights in the content you provide". Several still keep a use of their own, and BigCommerce's says it may use customer data on an aggregated and anonymized basis to improve its technology and develop new products.
Source: BigCommerce (Commerce), Master Services Agreement
Get the files out before the account closes
BigCommerce says it may delete archived data within 30 days of termination, and Adobe says it reserves the right to delete content after a cancelled subscription. Export the full-resolution originals before any store or DAM account is shut, not only the web-sized copies.
Source: Adobe, General Terms of Use
Confirm who shot them
A buyer of the business, or of the images alone, will ask whether each shoot was by staff or under a signed assignment, because a freelance photographer is the first owner otherwise. Our page on commissioned product photos sets out the US and UK rules.