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Feel sick! Lovely Email from Getty! Please help

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erika1959:
Anyone received a live telephone call from Pixsy? I've just screened a call from them. Is this standard practice?

victim2:
I have to say the advice given here to ignore the claim is very high risk and completely counter to the ethos of Civil Procedure Rules which encourages parties in a dispute to engage with one another and try to reach an out of court settlement.

If you ignore a legitimate claim, you will only be ahead if the claimant gives up. If they go ahead and issue a claim in the High Court then lack of response from a defendant will count very much against that defendant.

I realise many on here have said that Getty's policy is to bluff with never a real intention to issue a claim. However given that the universal reaction is to ignore the claim, then Getty will sooner or later realise it has no option but to follow through on its threats. If it does not take court action then it will not be able to  enforce its copyright and if it cannot enforce its copyright then nobody is going to pay it a licence fee. This is a multi million pound corporation, they are not stupid people, sooner or later Getty will be forced to bring court actions and if they do, do you really want to be a defendant in a High Court Action ?

The best advice for Copyright infringement claims is the same advice where you are faced with any other form of legal claim for damages. If the claim is legitimate, then your lowest cost option is to reach an out of court Settlement. Contrary to advice on here, I would suggest you argue your case well and certainly challenge quantum , however try to seek an out of court settlement. jaw jaw is better than war war.

Robert Krausankas (BuddhaPi):
Not every case should be  ignoted, but many of them can be, in many cases Getty simply sends an email, as they have no name, no address or no "person" to contact directly, they get this info from the domain whois mainly, sometimes they get info form the offending site as well.. Naturally they can't file a claim against an email address.

Matthew Chan:
Actually, we do tell people to negotiate and settle the matter if people need certainty and closure.  In a broader sense, the numbers that are stated in the letters are overinflated and designed to have wiggle room.

However, rightfully or wrongfully, many victims do not want to pay anything but a low or zero fee. By virtue of that, they are forced into a more aggressive non-payment position which includes "ignoring" or "going dark".

And even if one were to stand their ground, it is always good to have a response on file of why you refuse to settle. Many times if the terms of settlement is unreasonable or disproportionate, the other side will compromise. However, this is all premised on someone's ability to negotiate and take the risk to take a stand.


--- Quote from: victim2 on May 10, 2018, 03:08:05 PM ---The best advice for Copyright infringement claims is the same advice where you are faced with any other form of legal claim for damages. If the claim is legitimate, then your lowest cost option is to reach an out of court Settlement. Contrary to advice on here, I would suggest you argue your case well and certainly challenge quantum , however try to seek an out of court settlement. jaw jaw is better than war war.

--- End quote ---

victim2:
I would agree with Mathews  point on wiggle room. Bringing an action in the High Court is a lot of work for the claimant and thus I am sure most if not all claimants , would prefer an out of court settlement , even at a significant discount.  They will naturally claim at the higher end of what they consider reasonable.

How much they can claim depends  on various factors including the normal selling price of the work in question, the extent of the use and the behaviour of the parties, both in relation to the infringement and their behaviour during litigation.

My own personal view, and unfortunately I have no evidence to back it, is that there are two types of claimants, those who intend to pursue the claim and those who are bluffing and have no intention of ever bringing a claim.

If a claimant were the latter type then I can see that it they may be tempted to issue a vastly exaggerated claim because it is never going to be censured by the courts. 

When considering whether a claim is exaggerated, one cannot just look at any given figure of X GBP and say whether or not it is exaggerated. It all relates to the value that that particular work is normally sold for plus any aggravating factors. Most Copyright Infringement Claims involve photographs and the value of a photographs in general can vary wildly from free, to a few pounds to thousands of pounds for a single image.

Now the normal licencing costs may be a starting point but there are other factors to be considered as well, eg has the defendant also altered the image, removed a copyright notice, meta data  etc  etc. In the UK the IPEC has awarded 20x the normal Value of a work ( Absolute Lofts South West London Ltd vs Artisan Home Improvements Ltd &  Darren Mark Ludbrook  [2015] EWHC 2608 (IPEC) )  Thus I personally , would consider a claim exaggerated if it was in excess of 20 x the normal value of the work, unless there were exceptional circumstances. ( eg the defendant made a lot of money from the infringement )


The figure mentioned of 10 x the normal value of the work is not necessarily exaggerated, however to achieve it court, the claimant would have an awful lot of work to do and would have to show that the defendant was particularly outrageous or made a lot of money from the infringement.  If it were to go to court, I think if the case was a fairly standard infringement and not particularly outrageous then the court would likely award a lower amount. I would not see it as exaggerated per se but merely the starting point for negotiations. This is just the way litigation works. As defendant your starting point would be the normal licencing cost of the work. Having a starting point of Zero is not helpful in reaching a settlement and would almost certainly  have a negative influence on damages if the case does go to court. Whatever the starting point and whether you are a claimant or a defendant, you should expect to move your position nearer your opponent during negotiations.

In all the case judgements I have read, and I have read an awful lot of them, no defendant has ever been found liable for copyright infringement and then been awarded zero damages, indeed the EU Directive 2004/48/EC  on the enforcement of intellectual property rights, states that the courts must award "at least the amount of royalties or fees which would have been due if the infringer had requested authorisation to use the intellectual property right in question". The Directive is online and is essential reading for anyone involved in IP litigation within the EU. It also takes precedence over UK statute law -

http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELEX:32004L0048R(01)&from=EN

Article 3 of the above states that damages must be "dissuasive" which indicates that they should be rather more than the normal value of the work. Copyright Infringement would not be dissuaded if copyright holders were forced to undertake time consuming litigation, only to be awarded what they should have been paid without litigation. Thus almost all of the IPEC SCT cases I am familiar with have resulted in damages significantly more than the normal licencing value of the work, typically in routine cases 2x to 6x.

One point I should mention, is referring to defendants in general as victims is unhelpful. As with a large proportion of Civil Litigation, both sides may regard themselves as Victims. From a legal point of view the Victim will be the one who has suffered loss due to the unlawful conduct of the other party. Where one is a defendant in a case where ones own conduct has been unlawful, a more apologetic and reasonable negotiating stance is likely to achieve a better settlement outcome , or ,  should reasonable negotiations fail, would be looked on more favourably by the court.

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