Who owns the photo negatives of a deceased photographer. Does there need to be something legal in place for protection.

If you're the sole heir and your parent died without a will, then you'd inherit their photos and their copyrights, to the extent that your parent didn't sell those to their customers. You need to check the copyright status of their photos and their contracts with their customers to make sure who owns what and to make sure everything that needs to be registered for copyright has been registered. Disclaimer: Please note that this answer does not constitute legal advice, and should not be relied on, since each state has different laws, each situation is fact specific, and it is impossible to evaluate a legal problem without a comprehensive consultation and review of all the facts and documents at issue. This answer does not create an attorney-client relationship.

Sale of prints of a photograph or other creative work does not pass the copyright right with it; an assignment in writing is required to transfer copyright rights. Check the US Copyright Office indices and get the pertinent files (you will have to order them and await responses) to be sure. Qualify yourself as administrator of your parent's estate if he/she died intestate, or as executor of his/her will, and the register copyright in any photos of value that you may want to publicize or sell prints of. Estate and Copyright lawyers will be helpful to you in these processes. The above is general information, not particularized legal advice, and no attorney-client relation is establsihed by it between me and you or any other reader of this post. Creation of such a relationship is established only by mutual consent after individual consultation and agreement on scope of duties, fees, etc.

As the sole heir, you most likely own whatever rights your parent owned. But you should not assume that you are free to grant or refuse use of whatever images your parent left behind. In general, photographers own the copyrights in photographs which they take, But often photographers enter into contractual arrangments which transfer rights in these photographs to others. For example, most companies in the music or film business who retain photographers to conduct photoshoots or other such projects require that the photographer enter into a "work for hire" agreement which assigns all rights in the photographs to the company in exchange for agreed fees (usually a flat fee). Even though your parent may have kept the negatives, he or she may have no right to use them. Even if your parent maintained ownership of the copyrights in the photographs, he may have exclusively licensed the photographs to another company or person. And if the photographs include images of celebrities or other persons, you need to find out whether such persons issued a release to the photographer allowing the photographer to use their images and rights of publicity for commercial purposes. Thus, for each photograph you need to ascertain whether your parent retained the rights to it or licensed and/or assigned it to others. And to the extent the photographs include pictures of individuals, you need to find out whether such individuals issued releases which consent to the exploitation of their images by the photographer for commercial or other purposes. Finally, you need to ascertain whether the photographer registered the photographs with the U.S, Copyright Office. If so, your parent probably carefully maintained copies of registration certificates. If you cannot find such certificates, you can conduct (or retain counsel to conduct) searches of the records of the copyright office to ascertain if any of the photographs were registererd. Even if the photographs were not registered, if they were taken after 1976 copyright automatically attaches when the photograhs are taken. The copyright status of photographs is a complex matter that requires that you consult with legal counsel who specialize on these issues. Please note that before you begin to exploit these photographs commercially, it is quite important that you retain legal counsel to guide you through this process. If you make a mistake on any of these issues, you can find yourself as a defendant in a very expensive law suit.

First, you should probably check any safe deposit box and with any family attorney to make sure there is no will. Then check with any photo agency your father may have worked with to determine whether he assigned ownership of any of his copyrights to it or otherwise gave it any ownership interests. If you find "work-for-hire" agreements that he entered into, you should probably have a copyright attorney evaluate them to ascertain whether they are legally valid. (They may or may not be.) You may find that you are sole owner of the rights in certain of your father's works, and not in others. I recommend retaining a copyright attorney to help you make a PHOTOGRAPH-BY-PHOTOGRAPH evaluation of the status of each work. In addition to determining who owns the copyright in each work, you will need to ascertain whether there are any that are subject to licenses or grants. It is theoretically possible that, under the provisions of the Copyright Act, you might be entitled to "terminate" certain transfer, licenses and/or grants. This is a very complex area of the law that NO lay person can navigate without the aid of an attorney. Finally - on a related subject - you will need to ascertain whether your father obtained "releases" or "consents" from the subjects of his works to utilize the images. If he did not, then licensing others to use the works may violate the "privacy" or "publicity" rights of their subjects. IF you DO in fact own the copyrights in his works, then you should arrange for a copyright attorney to "register" or "renew" the copyrights in any works that have not yet been registered or that require renewal. (Note: Renewal registrations are optional, but still advised, for works copyrighted between January 1, 1964, and December 31, 1977.) You may be able to register a series of unpublished images as a group (subject to a single fee) and, under circumstances, certain published images together. That should save you some money. While "copyright" attaches automatically to a work, registration with the U.S. Copyright Office affords you significant additional protections: It enables you to sue should someone infringe the copyright in an image and makes you eligible for statutory damages and attorneys' fees should an infringement begin post-registration. Statutory damages can be sizable (up to $150,000 in the case of a willful infringement). Otherwise, you may be limited to "actual damages," which in many cases can be nominal. As you will see from this brief description, the subject area is a complicated one, fraught with possibilities for slip-ups. I strongly recommend that you hire a copyright attorney to shepard you through the process. Disclaimer: This answer does not itself establish an attorney-client relationship or constitute legal advice. It is for general informational purposes only.