Do I vaguely recall Oscar mentioning last year that he heard that Getty had settled out of court on this matter, but that he didn't know the details?
Edit: The Mulligan Memory is not totally brain dead after all! On doing a little backtracking I found Oscar's comment made on November 5, 2011, and here it is...
This lawsuit is interesting and something I have discussed on this forum previously. It is a declaratory judgment action asking the court to find that the plaintiff's use of the image is NOT an infringement of Getty's copyright. Normally this type of action is brought by a counterclaim in a copyright infringement suit, but it can be used offensively as this one is. One example of this type of case which we have discussed extensively here is Bernina v. imageline where Bernina successfully sued to have a court state that they did not infringe on Imageline's copyrights. I have emailed the plaintiff's lawyer in this case to get information on what happened in the case. The court file indicates it was dismissed voluntarily by the plaintiff on 11-2-11 before Getty even answered which is usually an indication of a settlement. I have long looked for but never found a client willing to pay the $350 to file a federal lawsuit plus legal fees who also had a valid license or claim over the images.
I hope that there isn't too tight a confidentiality agreement on any settlement so that the lawyer can pass on some info (which I can then pass on to this forum)
... found in the thread at
http://www.extortionletterinfo.com/forum/getty-images-letter-forum/avepoint-inc-v-getty-images/msg3602/#msg3602End Edit
The suit was filed on 9/6/11 and dismissed on 11/2/2011. So something happened very quickly, and I'd put my money on Getty forking over some money to get a tight confidentiality agreement.
If I ever have to go the declaratory judgment route with Getty and that copyright troll and collection agent Timothy B. McCormack and his paralegal Ashanti A. Taylor of Seattle, you can be sure when they come asking to make this suit go away that I'm going to request my $350 back for having to file, $830 for Getty's original demand, $2400 for McCormack's absurd increased demand, and $29,500 for 100 billable hours at $295 an hour for per se research and amateur lawyering.
By the way, if they wanted a signed confidentiality agreement, too, that'll cost an extra $1,000,000.
For me, making the whole thing public would be the most important part of giving these goons a taste of what they've been doing for far too many years to so many innocent people. There isn't enough money in the entire U.S., in my opinion, to make up for the angst, nervous worry, anxiety, and God knows what other levels of horrible stress these trolls cause to fellow human beings over bullshit thumbnail images that they don't even in most cases have a legal right to demand money for.
Boy, even after this much time I can still stoke up an angry fire over the wrongness of what these people are getting away with their nasty schemes.
Show Posts
