Public Domain Images, Can Anyone Use Them?

Posted on 8/2/2016 by Jim Pickerell | Printable Version | Comments (1)

This is an update on the story we published last week concerning Carol Highsmith’s copyright infringement suit against Getty Images and other defendants.

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Comments

PAt Kane Posted Aug 2, 2016
Well, I've read the entire complaint and there is definitely a missing defendant: Buyenlarge. This on-demand publisher may not have enough assets to be worth suing but at first blush it seems to be the culprit. The complaint even contains a sample credit line that reads Carol M. Highsmith/Buyenlarge/Getty Images. Online promotional literature, related websites, and a PDF for Buyenlarge emphasize that most of their content is in the public domain. Based on the copyright dates of the websites it's hard to determine if they are primarily doing on demand printing for online retailers, creating retail products or selling custom-wrapped chocolate bars for fund raisers. My guess is that plaintiff wants to rattle the cage of a bigger catch before implicating a Ma and Pa operation that may have simply misunderstood that uploading their image collection to a stock agency might be unethical if not illegal. Once Buyenlarge is named as a defendant Getty can plead, "not our fault!"

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