Stockfood America- phone calls and letters from law firm (not McCormick- advice?

[Truth1998]

Yep, I have received 3 voicemaila from two doffered (so called) lawyers from this company  out of New York. I repeat 2 lawyers. This is all a joke to me. My issue started back in October 2013 and my best advice is to call them once and go silent on these clowns. This has worked for me because all they do is send extortion emails to me and send me a random voicemail every now and then. I can prove fair use, so all they can do is attempt try and take me to small claims court. They want $600 bucks which they raised to $230 then dropped it back down to $420 because they want to settle. Ha! I am winning remaining quiet. Please do the same

[Robert Krausankas (BuddhaPi)]

This is not a "small claims court" issue, it's a federal issue, and "proving" fair use is not always a simple matter and is largely open to interpretation by the federal judge that hears the case, if it goes that far.. Care to share the 2 lawyers names with us?

[Diane]

Our business is in CA and I've received a few letters and phone calls from a law firm called Stern & Schurin LLP out of NY, stating they represent StockFood America, Inc., and that we have unauthorized use of an image(s), with a link to settle.  Our website was created by a US third party company that creates websites for my industry, so I am not the only retailer that has been harassed.  The website developer told me to ignore the letters and phone calls and referred me to this site in case I needed assistance.  I did answer the phone call from the law firm once, I told the guy that our website was created by a website company and they should have the license for use of the images in question, but he told me that it is my company's responsibility and he was not going to contact the web company because it is my company's responsibility to know what is on the website and that I can sue the website company for the amount I am supposed to pay the law firm to be reimbursed.  Website developer says ignore them or get help from ELI, so here I am.

I did go to stockfood to look up the images and found one image but not the other.  It is easier to go online and grab the images off the internet on a google search than to find the images on their website.  Also on stockfood's website they state:
 "License Compliance Services
StockFood strives to protect the interests, intellectual property, and livelihoods of the contributors with whom we work, and for this purpose has mandated License Compliance Services to manage copyright compliance on our behalf."  So Stern & Schurin who contacted my company does not even represent stockfood america.

After the first letter, I went to the website developer and they immediately removed the images, which were for recipes on the website and not just mine, other retailers as well.  They also informed me that other retailers are receiving the same letters for copyright infringement on these or other images.

Could this law firm be working with LCS?  Do I need a license or contract from the website developer that these images were part of a license agreement they have with stockfood america and because they hosted our website that we are in compliance with the images?

I'm going to ignore the letters and calls for now, but I do want to have what I need to make them back off.

[Jerry Witt (mcfilms)]

Nice of the web developer to refer you here. Now they need to educate themselves about copyright law and stop grabbing images from the Internet and displaying them on the sites they develop. They could have easily licensed these photos for a few bucks. You need to go through your site and determine where the other photos came from.

In the very highly unlikely event that Stock Food takes you to court and is awarded a judgement, you will have a cause against the web developer. But the bottom line is that the odds are that if you ignore the emails and threats, they'll probably leave you alone.

By the way, you can find other sites that use the same image by doing a reverse image lookup with tineye.com.

[stinger]

"License Compliance Services
StockFood strives to protect the interests, intellectual property, and livelihoods of the contributors with whom we work, and for this purpose has mandated License Compliance Services to manage copyright compliance on our behalf."  So Stern & Schurin who contacted my company does not even represent stockfood america.

According to the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, the only person or entity who can sue you for copyright infringement is the copyright holder.  These rights can be transferred in whole to one entity, but the above quote leads me to believe that has not happened.  It leads me to believe that they pay License Compliance Services to harass people to give them money under threat of the law (trolling).

I agree with Jerry's highly unlikely scenario.

Take this for what it is worth.  I am just a guy who has been watching these copyright trolls for about 4 years now and that is what I would read (between the lines).

[Robert Krausankas (BuddhaPi)]

Something else to be aware of...Lets just say that your web development firm did in fact license the images in question ( which I highly doubt) that license is generally "non-transferable".. in other words they can't license it, then give it you and a bunch of other people.. If they had licensed the image properly, one would think they would know this.