If you were walking down the street and saw an unlocked vehicle with its keys in the ignition, would you get in and drive away? Hopefully, you wouldn’t. Someone else owns that vehicle and you wouldn’t want to incur legal ramifications for doing so.

Let me take that same analogy to your work in the B2B realm: It’s very tempting to type a phrase or even a few keywords into a search engine to find an accompanying image for a blog, email or some other piece of B2B communications. However, legally using images found online is not as simple as copying and pasting.

Search engine image results are not necessarily free for people to use whenever they need them. The vast majority of said results are copyrighted and/or trademarked, meaning they are owned by their creators.

“Thou shall not steal.” You either need to pay the creator (sometimes handsomely) to use their image or get their expressed, written permission for you to use it once for free.

Let me give you an example of what I mean.

You are probably very familiar with the yellow smiley face logo. It’s easy to find; they are commonly found on clothing from lapel buttons to t-shirts … heck, even Forrest Gump got into the act in 1994. The point is, it’s around. But if you want to use it, be prepared to open your wallet.

Walmart, one the largest big-box retailers in the U.S., found out the hard way. They use “their” version of the smiley logo with their “rollback” savings events. The logo was created in 1972 by Franklin Loufrani in France, when he was challenged by newspaper editor Pierre Lazareff to create a campaign to spread happiness during a rather downtrodden time in the country. As such, Walmart didn’t have the legal right to use it as if it was their own. Loufrani sued Walmart a few years ago, and they have since reached a mutual legal settlement (read: they now pay him money for the right to use it).

So should you stumble upon the “perfect” image to use for your B2B collateral, do your due diligence in researching whether or not it’s owned and copyrighted. After all, you wouldn’t want someone smiling at you in court because they sued you for improper usage of their design.

Have a nice day!