Getting Getty's Claim Transferred to my company oppose to my client's

[christinarule]

Hi All,
One of my client's received a "Extortion Letter" from Getty Images. The image in question by Getty Images was published on one of my client's sites which my company had done work for. For obvious reasons,  I would like to eliminate my client all together from this mess and have Getty's Claim transferred to my company, since we were the ones in charge of all graphical content produce on that site (at the time).  I've reached out to Getty but I have yet to hear back.  Is this is something I need to take care of prior to signing up for the letter program? Does anyone foresee the transfer being an issue? Has anyone else out there ever been in the same situation?

Thanks in advance!

[Greg Troy (KeepFighting)]

christinarule,

Welcome to the forums, you happen to catch us while the Getty/Masterfile forum is down for maintenance. There are stories about your situation and plenty of information there. I anticipate the form being backup within several days. In the meantime I will try to answer your questions for you.

Getty will generally not transfer anything to you in less you are telling them you want to pay the full amount as they go after the site where the image is hosted. What you can do is retain Oscar and his letter program on behalf of your client and then your client will no longer receive any communication whatsoever from Getty as it will go to Oscar. This is not an uncommon situation and Oscar has plenty of experience dealing with it.

I hope this helps answer your question and in the meantime should you have any others until we can get the Getty forum back online please feel free to post them here. Please keep us posted as to what you decide to do.

Hi All,
One of my client's received a "Extortion Letter" from Getty Images. The image in question by Getty Images was published on one of my client's sites which my company had done work for. For obvious reasons,  I would like to eliminate my client all together from this mess and have Getty's Claim transferred to my company, since we were the ones in charge of all graphical content produce on that site (at the time).  I've reached out to Getty but I have yet to hear back.  Is this is something I need to take care of prior to signing up for the letter program? Does anyone foresee the transfer being an issue? Has anyone else out there ever been in the same situation?

Thanks in advance!

[Oscar Michelen]

They will not transfer the claim to you, they will insist on dealing with the original letter recipient only .

[christinarule]

Thank you both for taking the time to respond. I'm going to definitely sign up for the letter program. It's unfortunate this happend actually, the page that the image was on was just a demo page and only had about 60 views (most from me during development). Will be in touch!

[SoylentGreen]

What you describe is a very common tactic that Getty uses.
Getty will put the squeeze on your client, thereby making you look "bad" in the eyes of a customer.

Having said that, Getty usually doesn't sue over a single image or anything.
But, they do bother alleged infringers over a long period of time before giving up.

S.G.