Masterfile Corporation

I have found with Masterfile that when you show prior purchase from a valid source, they drop their request for damages. The difficulty is in finding the proof of payment or connecting it to the exact images that they now claim are being infringed upon. While I have a great number of issues with their approach, they are light years ahead of Getty and are usually willing to listen to sound arguments. That being said, I thnk a concerted effort to make this issue more public woul dgreatly help the situation asin the end I think both Getty and Masterfile's approach are bad for their own busniesses and bad for copyright law in general.

I agree Oscar, but on the other hand, I went to Masterfile's site to look up the price of the two items they claimed were infringed and my conclusion that for those particular items, catalog numbers 700-00023992 and 700-00020568, I can only conclude that Masterfile either had no realistic intentions of trying to sell the images for the outrageous licensing prices of from $500 to over $2500 apiece (similar and sometimes better images were being sold on istockphoto for around $40!) . Maybe the person that sets the prices for Masterfile images is on bad drugs?

In any event it seems like Masterfile's business model is to make its money from threats and litigation rather than actual sales. I would love to find out how much of their revenue is from legal action (including from demand letters) versus people actually paying for their images which are several times the prices of other stock photo providers. I am sure that Masterfile may have a collection of images that people would buy, but the two in question I can guarantee no one would buy from them and would go to istockphoto instead. I guess if Masterfile is not guilty of extortion, they most certainly could be placed with those who price gouge customers!

While I agree with your client's position that it is not liable under these circumstances, I find it unlikely that the FBI is investigating Masterfile for this program. At best this would be civil fraud, it would not rise to the level of a crime. My firm does a lot of federal criminal defense litigation as well and believe me the FBI have their hands full with true racketeering; terrorism; child pornography and identity theft. So I would love to hear about the actual contact with the FBI so I could follow up on it.

When clients maintain their receipts and can show proof of purchase of the images, Masterfile will normally back down. But your point about keeping the receipts is correct - most people don't do that and if they do, they don't keep them for 7 years or so. I advise all clients to keep a hard copy file in their office of all the issue dealing with their website - registration; images; design purchases etc., so that they have a resource to go to if their computer crashes or they just buy a new one and don't transfer over the information.

Thanks for the post and please keep us updated.

I was contacted by this firm as well indicating I had a pic on my web site that was being used without an agreement. I was totally unaware of the use of the pic on my site as being or belonging to someone. In fact I used a third party to design my site and for all I know we purchased the pic several years ago. But that said, we only put it on the site in November of 2009.

Just tell me your thoughts. They are trying to get $3,000 from me. They offered to settle for $1,200. If I did something wrong I do not mind paying but I am not even sure I did and in some cases where a person was unaware of the infringement a judge will award $200 max per infringement which in my case I was unaware. Now they also recently asked me to provide them proof it was in fact placed on the site in Nov of 09' and that may have an effect on the settlement. They are charging me for one year. Don't they have to prove that amount of time? Is there any type of limit to the time you have a pic on where the court might say "four months, for get it", is there? I am thinking that sending them anything acknowledging the use of the pic could be used against me and I should only produce such evidence when needed and if needed in a court. Also, I have several clients/associates that would attest to the fact that the pic was not there prior to November, 09'.

Please advise.

The $200 for innocent infringement is not automatic and you have to go through litigation to have a judge award that. The length of time is relevant and they would have to prove that if they wanted to use that as an element of assessment of damages, but the court can also just award a straight statutory amount along with attorney's fees. A court will also consider if you made a "reasonable" settlement offer in determining how much to award them in attorney's fees,so you may want to keep that in mind as well.

Oscar, thank you for the reply. We did actually settle it and I believe they are really trying to do the right thing for the artists they said they made a promise to that they will protect their work. That said, I think the laws should be somewhat updated to allow a user a grace period to remove the image first. I had a few conversation with the person I dealt with and I think he was quite reasonable. I am not sure if this is what everyone wants to hear but try and see it from their side. If you had your work used without your knowledge how would you feel? Then and only then make the case with you on the other side. Just try and imagine that. I made a mistake and while it was an honest mistake it was one nonetheless. Now I say all this with the assumption that the image was not purchased and maybe just the records lost of the purchase or in some of the cases described above where the firms selling the images went out of business and so now these firms are going after people hoping they have no proof from images acquired years earlier. But that said, I think they have a point. People need to be careful to use images they are not sure where they came from. Am I happy I am out some money? Of course I am not but if I were on the other side I would not be happy either.

Thanks again.

Glad it worked out and thanks for updating us.

We are a small california based IT consulting company, our company website developed by one contractor in India for US $500, Got Similar demand letter in Dec 2009 from Masterfile for using 8 images for $20,640.00, I was surprised, because I do not know the contractor used copyright stuff, then I sent that notice to the contractor who developed our website, thought that he will respond with copyrights to me, but he did not respond to that notice. Our company is in deep losses in 2008 and 2009, also our company is not doing any busienss now - so planning to dissolve, but our website is up and running. I my self found job at some other company. So did not respond to that letter, later Masterfile sent another notice to our website hosting company about hosting 3 copyright images and stop hosting thme - how come they reduced copyright images from 8 to 3 ?

Then that contractor simply removed those 3 images from our website in March 2010, later we got another demand notice from Masterfile saying like"it is not done by removing the images - but you must pay" - then that contractor remvoed all the remaining 5 images from the website in May or June 2010. But in 2nd week of July 2010 Masterfile sued us for $1,220,000 in california federal court in San Francisco. We did not communicate with Masterfile till today. Please help.

Give me a call after 230PM NYC time to discuss 516 248 8000

See my response to you other post Lynn