Getty file complaint in high court against JA Coles

[seb414]

Hello. I am new to this forum but not to Getty.

So far they have sent me 2 letters and I have received 1 email 1 letter and 1 phone call from MortonSmith. I have read many posts on the subject of how to deal with Getty and I have chosen to remove the image and ignore Getty and their henchmen.

That was until I read that Getty has filed a complaint in High Court. http://www.out-law.com/page-9880

I don’t know about anyone else on this forum but I am quite interested in the outcome of this case.

My question to anyone that might know is how much does it cost to defend yourself against something like this?

I have to say that I am a little worried......

[Lettered]

They have discussed this case at the FSB forum: http://www.fsb.org.uk/discuss/forum_posts.asp?TID=194&PN=1  (also linked to from this sites front page).

I think the guy that actually designed the site for JA Coles commented somewhere in there.  Its a long thread ... 120+ pages ... so you may have to look a bit to find the JA Coles references.  Since you are in the UK, there is probably a lot of other information you can benefit from there as well.

[seb414]

Its stange, no one seem that bothered.

If Getty win then we all have to pay up....

Well in the UK anyway.

[metoo]

Well, Getty have won a case...

details of the Getty win against JA Coles

Personally, I have a bill for £800 x11 images = £8800.  Typical story; a webdev firm was asked to develop a site, the site was live for a while but then replaced over 2 years ago by a new site.  This year (August 2009) we receive an invoice from Getty (interestingly dated with a June 2008 date) demanding the money.  We've already gone back to Getty to tell them that the site was removed some time ago following issues with the webdev company and that we buy our images through an agency called fotolia.co.uk for all images on our site that has been live for nearly 2 years.  We relied on the webdev firm previously and assumed all was ok, perhaps naive in hindsight.  Getty ignored the response to them and have put Moreton Smith on the job to collect money.  We have not responded to them yet.

I've already had a few huge ongoing stressful situations this year and this is just tipping me to the edge, we cannot afford this bill and see it this way that the webdev firm are in breach here and it was for something over 2 years ago without our final control.

Oscar, can you be of any assistance, I am really on that edge...

[metoo]

I should have stated that my company is UK based

[Matthew Chan]

I personally find it interesting that there isn't a single attorney in the U.K. who has chosen to take this case on.  Having said that, there weren't many attorneys in the U.S. that had the sophistication to understand the issues as Oscar has.  The few attorneys I communicated with was simply willing to roll over based on their reading of the law.  However, I am quite happy I persisted on to find Oscar because my "common sense" told me that there was more to this than a simple reading of the law.

I can't speak for Oscar other than say that he can only practice here in the U.S.  But I am sure he would make an excellent legal advisor to a U.K. Attorney willing to be creative, open-minded to represent U.K. clients.

[Oscar Michelen]

I have actually commented on this case on the UK blog on the FSB forum; it appears that the defendant did not contest the case and it was granted on default.  Also, I believe that the issue of "innocent infringement" which in UK means that there are no damages awarded if the infringement was not intentional, was not argued either. So I don't know how much precedent value the case will have. I would note that the case was reported in early September and no other cases appear to have been filed or decided since.  I cannot represent you in the UK unfortunately and like Matthew says we know of no firm that has decided to make a stand on this issue as we have here on this site.  Just some advice in general, Moreton Smith handles most if not all of their UK claims so that is not unusual or telling in any way.  If they knew about the infringement in June 2008 and did nothing about it until August 2009, they may not be entitled to any damages for after June 2008 -though I do not know UK law, so you would have to check that with a UK lawyer.

[mellow6]

Has anyone in UK been taken down by getty? Did u know getty used to keep a public payphone in his hallway for his visitors to use. Enough said!