With a portion of Polaroid’s famed collection of photographs headed for the Sotheby’s auction block next spring, some of the photographers in the collection are not happy about it, the Boston Globe reports. The photographers question whether the company actually bought the photographs or just the right to use them.

The problem for the photographers is that, according to a bankruptcy judge, they should have tried to claim their work back in 2002, when Polaroid first went through bankruptcy proceedings. After the company went bankrupt that year, a group of investors bought its assets, including the multimillion-dollar collection of 16,000 images, containing works by such renowned photographers as Ansel Adams. Then, the investors declared bankruptcy themselves, and the same judge ruled that the photos could be sold to pay creditors. Further complicating matters: Polaroid signed different agreements with various photographers, so the terms for the photographs vary.

None of this is necessarily any consolation to the aggrieved photographers. "We loaned them our photographs; they don’t legally own them," says photographer Erica Adams, who wrote a letter to the judge. In any case, Sotheby’s plans to go ahead with its sale of 1,300 prints from the collection, which are valued between $7 million and $11 million.

Read more at the Boston Globe.