Has anyone run into this new method of attack? Adlife is now taking people to Small Claims Court in an attempt to extort money out of them. They are claiming that I stole use of their subscription site and feel that as a result I should pay several months of their overpriced subscription fee as compensation for one photo. I have never even heard of this site prior to being sued let alone ever downloaded any photos from it. Has this happened to anyone else on the forum? I am interested to know if your small claims date has already occurred? What was the outcome. Did they show up? Was it Rebecca who is an employee of Adlife and works with Albrizio. I am being harassed in the same manner and it would be helpful to know if you went to court what the outcome was. I am curious if they prevailed or if the Magistrate saw them for what they are? Did they file with the plaintiff being Prepared Food Photo’s .com?. Any info anyone can share would be greatly appreciated. I would prefer not to list my name as I am currently involved in an open claim against my company. Does anyone have any advice as to how to stop this sort of unfair business practice.
I just registered with a 'throwaway' account as I don't want to identify myself either- but I recently finished with this BS, was curious if the outcome of our case was posted online, and happened to run across this thread.
Our situation was exactly the same as yours- we got letters over the course of a year or so- starting with $8k down to about $2k. They called a couple times offering to 'settle' as well. Eventually they filed in small claims court asking for ~$2k + legal fees. While we got letters from AdLife originally, then from some random law firms, the suit was filed with prepared food photos dot com as the plaintiff.
When we attended court, there were several other people who were there for a hearing with this same company. Some didn't show up, and judgement was awarded to this company in those cases. We went before the magistrate and let them know that we did due diligence before using the pictures (checking the picture metadata for any copyright claims, etc.). Had we known it was a copyrighted image we would have used other stock photography that comes with a perpetual license for ~$50 for similar content. Ultimately the magistrate granted judgement in favor of the plaintiff, but reduced the damages from the $2k they were asking for down to less than $100 (including court costs).
Obviously our experience doesn't necessarily reflect what may happen in your situation, but it does seem that the 'reasonable person standard' can prevail in these cases. Hope this helps. I will try to check the throwaway email address associated with this account at some point in the future if you have additional questions.