(Yicai) Aug. 16 -- Visual China Group’s shares sank as the country’s largest stock photo company found itself mired in controversy again after a photographer claimed the firm was pursuing him for compensation over the use of his own photos.

Visual China [SHE: 000681] closed down 4.9 percent at CNY16.43 (USD2.25) a share today. The wider Shenzhen market fell almost 1 percent.

The blogger said on social media yesterday that he had received a phone call from Visual China saying his use of 173 of their photos on his WeChat account infringed the firm’s rights. The company also said he had to pay compensation of CNY80,000 (USD10,960).

But the man said he had taken all of the pictures himself and had never authorized Visual China to use them.

The Beijing-based company responded yesterday evening, saying the blogger had authorized Stocktrek Images to sell the photos and they were then licensed to Getty Images. Visual China, as the partner of Getty Images in the Chinese mainland, thereby owns the right to sell the photos, it said. 

Legal sources told Yicai that the right to sell the photos is not equivalent to the right to all relevant rights and interests. As a result, even though Visual China does own the selling rights to the pictures, it does not mean the company has the right to claim compensation from the original photographer. 

This is not the first time that Visual China has been involved in a copyright dispute. Back in April 2019, debate raged online after the firm added its copyright watermark to the first images ever taken of a black hole by the European Southern Observatory. People complained about company abusing copyrights and making profits through excessive guarding of rights.  

After that incident, Visual China took down its website for a month and removed all the controversial images.

Last month, the company said it expected first-half net profit to have soared 89 percent from a year earlier to CNY103.5 million (USD14.2 million). The audited results for the six-month period are scheduled for release on Aug. 18. 

Editors: Dou Shicong, Tom Litting