Of course, the perfect protection is to keep your images out of sight. Don't put them anywhere on the web, don't send out promos. You may never license a single one of them, but they're safe.
If you want to actually market and license them, you have to accept that there's some risk involved. You can minimize the risk by taking normal precautions. Make sure your copyright notice is visible on every digitally reproduced image. Add metadata so that your branding is electronically embedded within the image. Generate a proper paper trail whenever you do license an image. And - register the copyright for large batches at a time.
Any or all of these steps reduce the chances of an infringement occurring.
Registration makes any infringements that you catch much easier to pursue, since you can recover the costs of the pursuit. In fact, I've had two incidents over the years in which I discovered an infringement of my work. In both instances, when they learned that I had a registered copyright, they settled without delay.
James Cook
Creator of:
METAmachine
FindAPhotographer
