Trunk Archive (Located in New York City) is an image licensing agency. The company provides commercial imagery from artists like

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, Nick Knight,

Inez & Vinoodh Inez van Lamsweerde (born 25 September 1963) and Vinoodh Matadin (born 29 September 1961) are a Dutch-American fashion photographer duo, whose work has been featured in fashion magazines and advertising campaigns. They also produce independent art ...

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, Nadine Ijewere,

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, and

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History

The company was founded in

Copenhagen Copenhagen ( or .; da, København ) is the capital and most populous city of Denmark, with a proper population of around 815.000 in the last quarter of 2022; and some 1.370,000 in the urban area; and the wider Copenhagen metropolitan ar ...

, Denmark in 2004 by a group of investors, including serial entrepreneur Mickey Beyer-Clausen, who also served as the company's CEO until 2007. The current CEO is Matthew Moneypenny In 2013, the company was acquired by

Waddell & Reed Waddell & Reed Financial, Inc. was an American asset management and financial planning company founded in 1937 in Kansas City, Missouri. It was a publicly traded company from 1998 to 2021, and briefly had its headquarters in Overland Park, Kansas ...

and Ivy Asset Strategy Funds. In 2014 the company acquired Snapper Media in September 2013. In 2014 the company announced that it had acquired Bernstein & Andriulli (B&A) and Gallery Stock.

Controversy

The company has received criticism for its use of automated image tracking software PicScout to identify copyright infringement of images in its catalogue. In 2015, they claimed infringement against the magazine ''

2600: The Hacker Quarterly ''2600: The Hacker Quarterly'' is an American seasonal publication of technical information and articles, many of which are written and submitted by the readership, on a variety of subjects including hacking, telephone switching systems, Intern ...

'' for their use of a transparent

ink Ink is a gel, sol, or solution that contains at least one colorant, such as a dye or pigment, and is used to color a surface to produce an image, text, or design. Ink is used for drawing or writing with a pen, brush, reed pen, or quill. Thi ...

splatter image on the cover of their Spring 2012 issue. ''2600'' then revealed that the original ink spatter was created by an artist on

DeviantArt DeviantArt (historically stylized as deviantART) is an American online art community that features artwork, videography and photography, launched on August 7, 2000 by Angelo Sotira, Scott Jarkoff, and Matthew Stephens among others. DeviantArt, ...

who had released it into the

public domain The public domain (PD) consists of all the creative work A creative work is a manifestation of creative effort including fine artwork (sculpture, paintings, drawing, sketching, performance art), dance, writing (literature), filmmaking, ...

, meaning that Trunk Archive did not hold the copyright for the image. The infringement case was subsequently dropped by the company, and COO Melissa Kelly sent a letter to the magazine apologizing for the mistake.

References

Stock photography Photo archives in the United States Privately held companies based in New York (state) Photography companies of the United States {{Photo-stub