Letter recieved from gettyimages for image from DKimages

[Sox]

Hi all

I'm so glad to have found this forum, had been away for a weekend and came home to find a letter from Getty demanding £984 for an image they say was used on a corporate website! To say I felt sick and scared would be an understatement, but Google found me here and I’m so relieved not to be alone!

In our case we did temporarily set up a website last year for a business idea we had but decided not to go proceed with. I am sure I was careful at the time to choose images which were free (or maybe appeared free! A lot of people mention being caught by the teeny tiny print). Anyway the website was only up for approx six months, and made no profit, had no traffic and the images used were all extremely small as they were only place holders – we had planned to use our own images but as we decided not to proceed we just let the site expire earlier on this year.

Then we get this letter stating we used an image from the Dorling Kindersley collection and demanding £984. I checked the DK site and found that it would cost approx £46.00 to use this image if purchased from there!!!.

Anyway to cut a long story short I have paid DK £46.00 for use of the image, emailed them to explain that it is done retrospectively but without prejudice or liability (I’m not in the legal profession so am hoping this means “I’m paying but I don’t admit I did it”) and am now planning a strategy of seeing what happens (it's the best I could come up with  )... any thoughts on this (or any better strategy) would be much appreciated.

Sox

[Couch_Potato]

If the image is available on the DK website itself for purchase then Getty can't have exclusivity so couldn't claim for copyright infringement.

I personally would write to them in this case and inform them the image is available on the DK website and as such you doubt their claim to hold exclusivity on distributing the image and will enter into no further correspondence until such a time as they provide proof.

[Robert Krausankas (BuddhaPi)]

Or better yet, inform getty images, that you did indeed pay for the image directly thru DK, and that DK gladly accepted the money for past use of the image, and that this matter is now closed.

[Sox]

Great, thank-you both so much - was a bit worried I'd done the wrong thing (again)... why is everything always so complicated! I will wait and see if Getty images contact me again and if so will write a letter back with both of your points, thanks again xx

[Angry Welshman]

If the image is available on the DK website itself for purchase then Getty can't have exclusivity so couldn't claim for copyright infringement.

I personally would write to them in this case and inform them the image is available on the DK website and as such you doubt their claim to hold exclusivity on distributing the image and will enter into no further correspondence until such a time as they provide proof.

I also found that the pic I have supposedly infringed on was also available on DK (on getty it's listed as part of the dk collection) however since sending my letter off we're yet to hear anything. I'll use this though in case we get a follow up.

[downwithgetty]

any updates on this one?