'My Studio's Identity Was Stolen': Milan Creatives Speak Out on the Duplicate Image Crisis

Duplicate image replacement — the practice of lifting original visual content and substituting it across digital platforms, product listings, and promotional materials without permission — has accelerated sharply in Milan's creative economy over the past eighteen months, leaving photographers, designers, and small studios scrambling to protect work that anchors their commercial identity.

The timing matters. With Milan-Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics preparation driving an unprecedented wave of city branding commissions, and the fashion and design sector pouring resources into digital storefronts and international licensing deals, the volume of commercially valuable original imagery circulating online has never been higher. That visibility, several affected practitioners say, has made them targets.

One ceramics studio based on Via Tortona, in the Zona Tortona design district that draws tens of thousands of visitors each April during Salone del Mobile, discovered in March that product photographs it had commissioned in 2024 had appeared on at least four separate overseas e-commerce sites selling counterfeit versions of its tableware. The studio's images had been stripped of metadata and re-uploaded without attribution or licence.

Porta Nuova to the Navigli: Affected Voices Across the City

The problem is not confined to a single neighbourhood or sector. A graphic design collective operating from a shared workspace in the Isola district, just north of Porta Nuova's glass towers, found in May that three years of campaign visuals — created for local food and beverage brands — had been duplicated and repurposed on competing product packaging sold across Central Europe. The collective has since filed a formal complaint with the Tribunale di Milano, the city's civil court, which has specialist intellectual property chambers handling a growing caseload.

Photographers working along the Navigli canals, whose street and architectural work frequently circulates on Instagram and Pinterest, report a different dimension to the problem: their images are being used by short-term rental platforms and boutique hotel listings in the city to represent properties those images never depicted. The effect, several practitioners note independently, is reputational as well as financial — clients who see their photographer's name attached to a misleadingly staged listing lose trust in the original work.

Confcommercio Milano, the city's main traders' association, flagged digital content theft as a priority concern in its 2025 annual report on the local creative economy, noting that intellectual property disputes among its members had risen compared to the previous reporting period. The association has pointed members toward the Sportello per la Proprietà Intellettuale, a dedicated advisory desk operated in partnership with the Camera di Commercio di Milano Monza Brianza Lodi, which processed several hundred new IP consultation requests in 2025 alone.

What Practitioners Are Doing — and What Comes Next

Practical responses vary. Some studios have adopted cryptographic watermarking services that embed invisible, recoverable metadata directly into image files before any client delivery. Others have begun registering original work with the Società Italiana degli Autori ed Editori, better known as SIAE, which provides a dated record of authorship that can be cited in legal proceedings. Neither measure prevents duplication outright, but both improve the evidentiary position of rights holders pursuing claims.

The European Union's Digital Services Act, which placed new obligations on large online platforms to respond to intellectual property takedown requests from July 2023 onwards, gives Milan-based creators a stronger procedural lever than existed previously. Rights holders can now submit formal notices to platform legal representatives registered within the EU, and platforms face compliance timelines measured in days rather than weeks for verified rights holders.

For studios preparing imagery tied to the 2026 Winter Olympics — events scheduled to run from February 6 to 22 across venues in Milan and Cortina d'Ampezzo — the stakes are particularly high. A single duplicated hero image attached to an unauthorised sponsor or merchandise account could compromise commercial licensing arrangements worth thousands of euros. The Camera di Commercio desk on Via Meravigli in central Milan is the recommended first stop for any studio that discovers its work has been duplicated and wants to understand its options before engaging a lawyer.