Someone is using your thumbnail

Usually, yes. Under section 4 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, artistic works include “a graphic work, photograph, sculpture or collage, irrespective of artistic quality”. A thumbnail is a graphic work, and often a photograph or a collage too. It doesn’t need to be beautiful to count.

It does need to be original. UK courts apply the test from the European Court of Justice’s Infopaq case, which the Court of Appeal confirmed in 2023 still applies here: the work must be the author’s own intellectual creation. That bar is low. It means you made free, creative choices, such as the framing, the crop, the expression you captured, the colour grade, the lettering and the arrangement. Copying something mechanically doesn’t qualify.

Protection is automatic. GOV.UK: “You get copyright protection automatically – you do not have to apply or pay a fee.” There’s no register to join. A © mark is optional and changes nothing.

This is where most thumbnail reports go wrong. Copyright gives you rights in what you made, not in everything that appears in the image.

Usually yours to claim:

• a photograph you took yourself, including a still grabbed from footage you filmed
• your composition: the arrangement of cut-outs, the background you chose, the crop and the framing
• your lettering, arrows, outlines and graphic treatment
• the finished thumbnail as a whole, where your creative choices make it original

Not yours to claim:

• a press, stock or archive photo inside the thumbnail, which belongs to its photographer
• someone else’s frame grab or artwork
• the title text on its own
• the general style, such as a red circle, a shocked face or a split-screen layout

Using someone else’s photo inside your design doesn’t cancel their rights, and it doesn’t hand those rights to you. Your rights sit in your own contribution. So a report should describe your arrangement and edit, not the photo you licensed.

Two ownership traps are worth checking. First, stock licences often limit what you can claim over the image, so read yours. Second, section 11 makes an employer the first owner of work an employee makes in the course of their employment. A freelance designer isn’t an employee. Unless you have a written assignment or licence, the designer may own the thumbnail they made for you.

The Act covers copying the whole work “or any substantial part of it” (section 16(3)). Courts judge substance by quality as well as quantity. A small but distinctive, recognisable part can be enough, and there’s no percentage rule. Copying includes storing a work electronically, so a screenshot, a download or a re-hosted file are all copies. Putting it on a website or social feed is “communication to the public”.

The common patterns are:

• Cropped into a vertical frame as the cover of a Reel or TikTok.
• Re-hosted on a website as the header image of an article that retells your video.
• Used as a copier’s own YouTube thumbnail on a reupload of your video.
• Lightly altered, with new text, a colour shift or a mirror flip.

• Your original file as exported, with its metadata, plus any layered design file. Originals carry creation dates and detail a re-compressed copy loses.
• Your camera originals for any photograph in the thumbnail that you took.
• The link to your video where the thumbnail appears, and its publish date.
• The link to each copy: the post, the Reel, the TikTok, the video or the web page. For a website, also note the image’s own address.
• A dated screenshot of each copy in context, showing the account or page.
• A side-by-side comparison marking the details that match: the same cut-out edges, the same lettering, the same arrangement.
• One sentence describing your contribution, which you’ll reuse in every report.

If the thumbnail’s main image is a frame from your own footage, note the file name and the timecode it came from. That ties the picture to a recording only you hold, which is strong evidence when a copier claims they “found it online”. Keep all of this in one folder per video, so the next report takes minutes, not an evening.

1. 1

   Facebook or Instagram

   Use Meta’s intellectual property form. Choose Copyright, pick the platform, answer “Where are you asserting rights?” and “Are you the rights owner?”, then link the post and your original.

2. 2

   TikTok

   Use TikTok’s online copyright form, choose the copyright option for user-generated content and verify your email. TikTok asks for “supporting documentation identifying you as the owner”, so link your original video and describe your design.

3. 3

   YouTube

   YouTube says: “For non-video content, such as channel banner images, submit by email, fax, or mail.” For a copied thumbnail, email copyright@youtube.com with your contact details, a description of your thumbnail, the link, the two legal statements and your full legal name.

4. 4

   A website

   Report the page and the image address to the site’s host, and ask Google to remove the page from its search results. Our guide to a website copying your video walks through it.

5. 5

   Describe only your contribution

   In every report, say what you made: your photograph, your composition, your lettering. Leave out stock photos, titles and anything else that isn’t yours.

6. 6

   Log it

   Record the date, the platform, the link and any reference number. A thumbnail is often copied alongside the video, so keep the records together.

Meta’s content protection tool and YouTube’s Copyright Match Tool are built around video. Meta’s current help pages describe video reference files only, and YouTube’s tool looks for reuploads of your videos. Neither is a reliable way to catch a copied thumbnail on its own.

Say what you made and what the copy reproduces. This is an example to adapt:

This post uses the thumbnail image I created for my video, published on [date]: [link to your original]. I took the photograph in it and designed the layout, cut-outs and lettering. The copy reproduces my design, cropped to a vertical frame. I have not given permission for its use.

If your thumbnail uses a licensed photo, change the second sentence to describe only your edit, layout and lettering.

• Claiming someone else’s photo. A report that claims a press photo you don’t own undermines the parts you do own.
• Claiming the title. A bare title is very unlikely to be protected. In the Exxon case, the Court of Appeal held that a single invented name wasn’t an original literary work.
• No link to your original. The platform can’t compare anything.
• Too little taken. If only a generic element such as a coloured arrow was copied, that’s not a substantial part.
• A genuine exception. Criticism or review is allowed under section 30(1) if the work has been made public, the dealing is fair and there’s “sufficient acknowledgement”. A video that reviews your thumbnail practices might show it.

One exception doesn’t help copiers. Section 30(2) allows fair dealing for reporting current events with any work “other than a photograph”. GOV.UK confirms the news reporting exception covers “any type of copyright work other than a photograph”. A site that rehosts a thumbnail built on your photograph can’t rely on “news reporting” for it.

GOV.UK adds that there’s “no statutory definition of fair dealing”. Courts ask whether the use substitutes for the original and costs the owner revenue, and whether the amount taken was necessary. A copied thumbnail used to pull clicks to a rival page fails both questions easily.

Report each copy as it appears, on the platform where it appears. Facebook’s terms allow Meta to disable accounts that “repeatedly infringe other people’s intellectual property rights”, TikTok counts strikes and YouTube issues copyright strikes for valid removals. Keep your side-by-side comparisons, because the same design turns up again and again.

Moral rights are a weaker tool here. The right to be named as author must be asserted first and has exceptions for news and periodicals. The right to object to derogatory treatment needs damage to your honour or reputation, not just copying. Your ordinary copyright is the stronger claim.

This is general information, not legal advice. For a thumbnail you made yourself, the position is strong: an artistic work, protected automatically, whatever its quality. The hard cases are composites built around other people’s photos, and designs a freelancer made without a written assignment. If a copier makes real money from your artwork and ignores reports, the Intellectual Property Enterprise Court’s small claims track hears copyright claims of £10,000 or less, often without lawyers. For anything larger, speak to a solicitor.

Farm articles often re-host thumbnails to break the link back to the original. The page shows your image from its own server, not from YouTube, so nothing points back to your video. We report the image’s own address as well as the page, with a side-by-side comparison. If you’d like the report filled in for you, the free pack at the top of this page pairs the copy with your video, ready to paste and submit.