Seattle resident Derrick Coetzee uploaded 3,000 high-resolution photos of portraits in the UK National Portrait Gallery to Wikipedia.

The portraits were themselves in the public domain, and in the U.S., photos of public domain works of art are not copyrightable. But the National Portrait Gallery says that photos of paintings can be copyrighted in the UK, and also alleges that databases are themselves protected as intellectual property under European Union laws.

The museum demanded that Wikipedia remove the images, including photos of portraits of Anne Boleyn, Charlotte Bronte and George Gordon Byron. When the online encyclopedia didn't do so, the National Portrait Gallery threatened Coetzee with legal action unless he deleted the images from both Wikipedia and his own hard drives by July 20. As of Wednesday, the images were still available on Wikipedia.