Boston, MA 09/05/2014 (wallstreetpr) – Getty Images, Inc. filed a lawsuit against Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) alleging that Bing Image Widget infringed former’s copyrights. Bing Image Widget is Microsoft’s app which enables adding slideshows, as well as collages.
The Allegation
The photo-archive company, Getty while filing its case in Federal Court, Manhattan; said that Bing was showcasing images which has copyrights of various owners, Getty being one of them. Getty alleged that Microsoft’s Bing did not draw images from licensed collection and rather, disrespected copyrights by crawling across the Web, plagiarising and indexing whatever images were found. The Bing Image Widget allows website owners to publish any available digital photograph on the site.
Erosion of Copyright
The General Counsel for Getty, John Lapham said that Getty has been discussion with Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) the concept of copyright erosion since a year, in order to protect online images. He alleged that Bing Image Widget allows websites to embed these copyrighted properties for their commercial use, which is totally illegal. He explained that Getty’s embedding tool offers attributed images, and that too, only for non-commercial websites.
He said that the Bing Image Widget is used by thousands of web portals across the world, and these websites have access to some of the full HD images for free and without photographer’s attributes. These websites, Mr. Lapham, explained, are now using unlicensed images without copyright owners’ permission, one of which is Getty also.
Demand from Microsoft
Getty demanded in its lawsuit, a court order to block Bing Image Widget, which was launched by Microsoft in August 2014. At the same time, Getty is demanding “unspecified damages” for the same.
In an e-mailed reply to Reuters, the spokesman of Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) said that the copyright laws were very important and that Getty’s concerns would be looked and monitored closely. Getty represents over 80 million exclusive digital images.
