Retail portals must be aware of their responsibility for the vendors they host, according to photo library Corbis, which is suing Amazon.com over its dealings with a number of poster vendors accused by Corbis of copyright infringement.
Corbis, in Seattle, Monday filed suit for copyright infringement against Amazon, also in Seattle, and 25 poster vendors, in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington.
According to the suit, Amazon displayed infringing images, in which Corbis holds the copyright, on both its Web site and that of its Internet Movie Database subsidiary, imdb.com, while the vendors offered posters containing copyright images for sale through parts of Amazon’s Web site identified as Amazon Marketplace, Auctions or zShops. Fifteen vendors were named in the suit, and 10 others listed as John Does 1-10. These have not yet been identified because of their use of anonymous e-mail addresses, a spokesman said.
Corbis is seeking damages of up to $150,000 for each infringing image.
If Corbis wins its case against Amazon, it will put pressure on online department store operators to think carefully about the companies they invite to do business through their site.
“We want them to be aware of their responsibility with the merchants in their store,” senior company council Dave Green said – especially, he added, if they are going to describe them as “trusted partners,” as Amazon describes companies featured in the zShops sections of its site.
Corbis has identified 120 infringing images on Amazon’s Web sites and those of the poster vendors, and expects more to come to light as it continues its investigation, according to Green.
An Amazon spokesman dismissed the suit as “without merit” and said the company was not liable for the vendors’ activities.
“They offer their merchandise on the Amazon Web site but we don’t take possession or own or ship any of that inventory, and therefore we are protected from infringement liability by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act,” Amazon spokesman Bill Curry said.
Amazon has already removed the disputed images and items from its Web site in response to the lawsuit – but would have done this in response to a simple e-mail from Corbis, Curry said. “We care enough about intellectual property enforcement that we would act without a lawsuit.”
That move was welcomed by Corbis.
“We are very pleased that Amazon has quickly and aggressively removed a number of those companies from their Web site,” Green said.
Among the photographers represented by Corbis is Andrew Macpherson. Based in Hollywood, Macpherson specializes in shots of performance artists such as actors and musicians.
“A lot of my images have been pirated,” Macpherson said. “Unlike Napster, where it was very clear that people could avoid an artist’s rights but no one was making a profit, in this case the artist’s likeness and my rights are being stolen and someone is making a clear profit.”
Macpherson relies on Corbis to spot unauthorized or infringing use of his work, seeing that as part of the company’s role in representing him. “They have many more pairs of eyes,” he said.
But not enough, according to Green, who resents the time Corbis spends researching infringements for lawsuits like this: “The downside of infringements on a scale like this is that it requires Corbis to divert resources that should be devoted to photographers,” he said.
Corbis wants to move the load for policing ownership of images to the Web sites using them.
“One of the steps we can take is to have them adopt technologies,” Green said.
In a recent out-of-court settlement with online consumer photo printing service Ofoto, the Emeryville, Calif., company agreed to adopt digital watermarking technology from Digimarc of Tualatin, Ore., to pick out commercial images from those it is asked to print.
“That will help them spot images containing a particular Corbis watermark, so there is a degree of technology that can be implemented,” Green said.
