BANGALORE: Veteran photographer K.G. Somshekar has sought a compensation of Rs. 10 lakh from Kuvempu University, Shimoga, for "unauthorisedly" using the pictures of Kuvempu taken by him in 1970.

Mr. Somshekar, who now lives in Pune, told presspersons here on Monday that he would file a case against the university in a Pune court if it failed to pay him the compensation within three weeks for infringing his copyright.

He said that in 1970 he had taken 24 photos of the poet laureate at his "Udaya Ravi" residence in Mysore and he still had the negatives with him. "Writer C.P. Krishna Kumar had accompanied me to Kuvempu's house when these photographs were taken," Mr. Somshekar said.

Kuvempu University reproduced one of these photographs on the cover of student diary published as part of Kuvempu's birth centenary celebrations in 2003. The University had distributed 46,000 dairies after collecting Rs.100 from student for centenary celebration, he said. "The University exploited the photographs for making commercial gains and infringed on my client's copyright," Mr. Somshekar's advocate Arvind N. Mulgund has said in a legal notice issued to the Vice-Chancellor of the University on May 3 this year.

To a query, Mr. Somshekar said he had kept quiet all these days as Kuvempu's son and writer K.P. Poornachandra Tejaswi, had requested him not to a make an issue of it.

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