Court

Recently received this settlement demand letter and have been emailing back and forth trying to settle this. I asked for a copy of their copyright registration for each image in question (as suggested on this site) and they responded by saying they only show that in court as part of discovery. My question to this list is...has anyone actually been taken to court? If so the outcome? If not when did they stop harassing you?

Thanks for any replies.

It is not clear from your post which imaging company you are referring to, but it sounds like Getty Images. As many of the posts on this site will tell you, Getty does not appear to sue for less than 15-20 images or so or in cases of repeat offenders. Their business model may change at any time but for right now it does not appear that they are filing many cases in court at all.

Yes you are correct it is Getty Images. There were 4 - 5 images in question and I have taken them down. If the model is that they haven't bothered to sue anyone for a few images, in your experience do they stop sending letters eventually if I stop replying?

They keep up the contact for some time and it eventually goes to NCS Recovery, their "collection" agency. See the posts dealing directly with NCS and collection.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/02/2010 02:37PM by admin.

Thank you so much for answering my questions. I am also in NY so if this ends up getting escalated in any way I will contact your firm. I hope I did not cause any harm by responding to their notes and even offering a settlement (much smaller than they asked for) I was trying to be reasonable and responsible but obviously they are not in the business of being fair and reasonable. At this point they refused to supply me with copies of the copyright registrations so I was going to write back and explain that without them I have no proof that they are entitled to a settlement from me at all but now I am thinking I should just let it go. Again, thanks for any and all of your advice.

Good Luck!