Reaburn then logged on to Your Decal Shop's website and saw the image for sale as wall decals, and on wooden rounds.
The photo of the tui Reaburn took in 2012 and uploaded to Flickr. Photo / Grant Reaburn
Your Decal Shop, a family-run business, has been a big hit with its innovative and striking decals in recent years and recently ran a pop-up store in central Hastings.
But in his view Reaburn, who claims a second of his tui images was also for sale, believes the business has been, intentionally or unintentionally, taking copyrighted photos like his and manipulating them for profit.
The image was sold on the company's website before being removed after Reaburn got in contact. Photo / Grant Reaburn
Your Decal Shop owner Antony Clark told Hawke's Bay Today he had apologised to Reaburn for the fact that his tui photo was similar to Flaxmere Primary's wall decal, but insisted it was not the same.
"We drew a geometric style flying tui which was created with over 2500 different shapes and we gathered inspiration from it from a mix of different sources."
Products that use the tui image, as well as some others, are no longer for sale on its website.
"We work with a lot of artists in New Zealand and we are artists ourselves so we do take these scenarios seriously," Clark said.
"From first contact just last Friday, we immediately removed the designs from our website while having ongoing conversations with the photographer.
"We are a small family business with young children that work from home in Hawke's Bay, so we care a lot about this type of thing.
"We are in on going communication with the photographer and as we have said from his first contact, we would like to resolve this.
"We would like to try to make the best of the situation and work together with him."
Reaburn uploaded the photo to Flickr in 2012 with the copyright standard all rights reserved, meaning anyone wanting to use the image needed his permission.
The second photo of the tui Reaburn had taken and uploaded to Flickr in 2012. Photo / Grant Reaburn
The second image of the tui was also sold on the website before being removed after Reaburn contacted the company. Photo / Grant Reaburn
He licenses his images to Getty but had chosen not to with the tui images because he wanted to "keep stewardship" of them.
Reaburn said that often smaller photographers can get taken advantage of when they upload photos online.
A letter to Reaburn from Your Decal Shop seen by Hawke's Bay Today showed that the business had apologised "for the miscommunication with the art work" and offered to pay him 50 per cent of the profits and work together in the future.
Reaburn said he declined, telling Hawke's Bay Today it "was never about the money".
"If this has happened to me how many other photographers has this happened to?" he asked.
Raymond Scott, senior associate at Simpson Grierson and a lawyer in the firm's intellectual property team, said there are three points a copyright infringement claim is measured by: the objective similarity, meaning how similar the original work and the alleged copy are; whether there is some sort of causal connection between the two works; and whether there has been a substantial or whole part of the original work copied.
"Modifying or making changes does not in itself mean there's no [copyright] infringement," Scott said.
The photo Reaburn saw of the tui decal in the Hawke's Bay Today. Photo / Paul Taylor
Reaburn said he has given the copyright to Flaxmere Primary and will not charge them for having the image on its auditorium wall.
