MUMBAI: Louie Psihoyos, who won an Oscar award this year for his dolphin-rights documentary The Cove has sued CBS and BBC alleging unauthorized use of a photograph he took in 1994 for National Geographic.

The photo depicts a vast bank of active television screens surrounding a person seated in a dark cavernous space.

According to a complaint, Psihoyos said that the photograph took him more than a month and $100,000 to create. He says it has been licensed "thousands of times" to Microsoft, IBM, Lucent, Sony, Time magazine, text books, pamphlets and Apple. Apple, later, agreed to license the image after being sued by Psihoyos over an iPhone application.

Psihoyos takes exception with an article that appeared on the BBC news website last September entitled "Future is TV-shaped, says Intel." The article was accompanied by the famed photograph.

As for CBS‘ alleged misuse of the photo, Psihoyos says CBS Marketing appropriated it for commercial display at the 2009 Intel Developers Forum.