But we did license it...

[mclear]

My client received the Getty letter regarding an image on their Web site, which we designed three years ago. The (now former) employee who did the design is certain the image came from one of many royalty-free image disks we have in stock. Of course as luck would have it, we can't seem to locate the image now. The disk may have been lost, or the designer's memory may be faulty. Either way, we have no proof of this claim.

Do we have any ground to stand on? Has anyone else been in this situation?

We have removed the image anyway.

Mark

[Oscar Michelen]

Many of my clients have told me they are in the same situation.  One of them who spoke to Getty before contacting me told him that Getty wanted to see the printed End User License Agreement as if anyone prints that out, let alone reads it! Sometimes  you can trace the image as having been sold on a CD.  Getty has bought numerous companies that sold photo cds and then stopped issuing the cds.   As far as what you should do just take a look through the threads to get some info.  For one image you are not likely to be sued. In fact Getty has never sued anyone since they started this program in 2005. You have a lot of potential defenses so I would not panic, get educated by reading the site and don't settle with them.