To be honest with you it's never gotten to the point where i actually had to hire the lawyer to take action.
The guy i went to see told me the steps to take. You email the person doing it and the organization/site hosting the images. (In my case it's on FB)
If you don't notify them you can not file a suit later on.

He charged me 50$ When i asked him how much it would be if i had to escalate action. He didn't quote me an exact price but he said between 350$ and 500$
I guess it would depend on the lawyer and the area as well.

the way I see it is that , unless you have watermarked your pictures, there is no way you can get a good result out of any action taken. I might be wrong but... i'm just being practical.

In another life I was an event photographer.
I only had to do this once, luckily.
Owning the original (digital) image and camera secures your claim to be the owner of the image. Metadata is imbedded in your image, shot number, camera serial number, owner name...
The easiest thing to do is to download a "Cease and Desist" template, fill it in, and send it to the person who is using your images.
Of course, it's a lot easier to do this if you have the person's email.
Sending the letter electronically, taking a screenshot of the image, and including dates in the letter are helpful if you ever want to escalate. People I've spoken to about this told me to be corteous and friendly when doing this, since most of the time people don't know they are infringing, and will happily take down the images.

I have no idea who the seller is,but these are 100% my photos.....
Marius

When you list an item on eBay do you give them rights to use your image in whatever way they see fit (such as letting another seller use it, pre-populated for their listing)?

Not that I think its right but I wouldn't be surprised if something like that is in the fine print.

No ebay doesn't claim the rights to photos... they are just like a shelf in a store and all they are interested in it you selling your item so they can collect a fee and doing it legally...

I just sent him a message, I don't know If anyone else did. I'm not expecting to hear back though

The owner of the Photos (Marius) can click on to a link Report Item, hopefully this gets this item off.

Those are excellent and illustrative photos.  It definitely depicts the Nordland fig better than any other photos I have seen.  

I don't know how copyright laws works but I was told once that you need to put the copyright symbol in your documentation or computer program code if you want to start the copyright process for software you write.  If not someone can copy the code and you would be hard pressed to do much. 
Not sure how or if applies to published photographs.  But many photographs have watermarks, metadata or some stamp that states the photographer/owner...  Some websites even prevent you from copying photos by disabling functions in your browser.

When you publish a photo on the web can people use it or do they owe a royalty when using commercially?

eBay may make it easy for folks to copy the work of others but it does not give the others the right to use Marius' work.  eBay also makes it easy for someone like Marius to report it and then eBay will promptly take the auction down.  It has happened many times before.  Since the seller has the dubious honor of copying the photos and description from Marius, I certainly would not trust them to be selling what they claim to have.  I don't see any history of selling figs.  Marius recently sold some for $51 and it appears they just want to cash in on the action.

Bidding is up to over $28.  Marius, please report it by going to http://ocs.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ReportItemMember&items=201051348688&seller=krackalaka&active=1&state=1 and selecting the obvious choices there.  Jon has had to do this many times.

Anyone can use anything they want as long as it is within fair use: 

Let"s all bombard the seller with messages that they are not his photos. Some group action maybe?

This is the response I got today;


These cuttings are from my own tree. it is same kind and I apologize for
using his pictures, but I cannot change it now. I lost my pictures of my
own trees and will take new pictures this year and make sure I don't lose
them. I am not listing this item anymore until next year once I have my own
photos. All i have found is a few pictures of the fruit that I took last
year, but no pictures of the trees. I was going to edit the listing but it
has bids. Whoever wins the auction will not be let down, it is an amazing
tree. But as I said, I will not relist this item until I have pictures of
my own trees and fruits, which will be quite some time in the future.

-krackalaka

Interesting.  There apparently have been some bid retractions as the price has dropped $20.

I see $8? And that is still too much for empty promises.