Want to hire Oscar

[madhatter]

I am a Canadian who has received a second letter demanding payment for well over $10,000.  I purchased a portal website that was designed and marketed by two brothers.  They stated on their website the images were free to use and no copyright issues existed.  I now know I was very nieve.  These two brothers now own a multi-million dollar company and refuse to talk to me.  It has always been a dead site and no profits were ever made.  I live on a fixed income and have no possible way of paying this demand.  

Can a Canadian hire Oscar to write the letter or not?

Also can anyone tell me what "Injuction only remedy in innocent infringement" means as stated in Canadian copyright law.  I believe I can prove beyond doubt that I did not know or had any way of knowing of the infringement.

Thanks

[Oscar Michelen]

Dear Madhatter:

You are really in the rabbit hole now, welcome! I have drafted letters for some Canadian clients but for their use on their letterhead as I cannot represent you in Canada.  I do not know if you are in jeopardy of being sued because I do not know what getty is doing with its Canadian claims. Canadian copyright law mirrors the UK law in that injunction only for innocent infringement means that you are not responsible for money damages if you infringed innocently but that you cannot ever use the subject images again.

[madhatter]

Oscar, I am not really sure of what you mean.  To date Getty has only taken 2 cases to court in Canada, the last being in 08 and that case was settled out of court.  I can prove that I had no way of knowing the images were copyrighted as I bought the website as a package to use as is.  I immediately deleted the site as it was a dead site anyway and have no use for the images.. I also checked for copyright registration and none of the images in question were registered in USA or Canada..  I feel the person marketing the sites to others is the true infringer, although I do understand the law states the end user is.  If one can prove innocent infringement with unregistered images and does not want to ever use the images again what can the courts award to Getty, if it went that far?

[Oscar Michelen]

Not much at all, which is our whole point on this site. Thanks for the info and the post