Facts of the case.

The facts are that there was an agreement and in this agreement it was explicitly provided that all rights that the Society acquired in the photographs from the job would be returned to Greenberg 60 days after the pictures were published in the Magazine.

After years had passed the society of National Geographic had a ceremony and produced an animated clip with previous issues, These images, through the use of computer animation, overlappingly fades ("morphs") into the image of another cover, pauses on that cover for approximately one second, and then morphs into another cover image, and so on, until 10 different covers have been displayed. One of the cover images used in the moving covers sequence is a picture of a diver that was taken by Greenberg in 1961. The entire sequence lasts for 25 seconds, and is accompanied by music and sound effects.

After eleven years of court, in its final form, granted The National Geographic Society -- and by extension, other publishers -- the right to reproduce its magazine archive in digital format without paying additional royalties to freelance contributors.