"Did you read the judgement yet? There's no point discussing anything without knowing the facts of the case."

I know it's nice and quick to dismiss arguments by presuming someone didn't read something, but yes, I read the article and I think the two photos are different enough. Mo matter what the judge wrote.

If anything, I'd say that the second photo (although aesthetically worse IMO) captures better the iconic landmarks by focusing just on the Parliament, the Big Ben and the Bus.

Yes, is missing, the bridge, but look at how busy is the first photo with the lampost and the bus covering the parliament and the people on the bridge. It also captures a wider area, loosing focus on the main icons.

The first is, overall, a better photo, but if I had to choose one to put on kitsch mugs, I find the second one more iconic (maybe cropping more on the right).

"If that's all it had been, the judgement makes it clear that the result would not have been infringing."

That was an extremization. Still, if I think I can do a better job at capturing a similar photo, I'm now barred from doing it and use the photo commercially unless I demonstrate that I did it either by canche, or that I didn't know about previous work (or more generally that my intent was not to take a photo not to pay the licence to someone else).

There are plenty of photo spots around the world were everyone go to make similar photos and plenty of well-known techniques that can be applied in post-processing. Yet, there are very few really original (creative) photos taken in such places.