Any USA based 'no win/no fee' copyright lawyers?

[john_macpherson]

I have a current situation where one of my images has been copied

without permission and reused approx. 350 times. I have sent a polite

email to the offender, but should they refuse to respond (quite

likely) I may consider setting a lawyer onto them to give them a fright.

 

Being UK based this presents obvious challenges! However, we have 'no

win/no fee' solicitors here, and I wondered if anyone knows of a US

based lawyer who is reliable and would work on this basis in a case of

copyright infringement?

 

This case seems fairly clearcut (IMHO) - the company have my image all

over their website (at least there, not sure where else), it has been

used multiple hundreds of times. I have the original transparency, and

a copy of the (only) book it was used in and from which it was copied

where it clearly names me as author and copyright holder. I have

several other images in the series that show it is obviously the same

location, same time etc.

 

Any suggestions?

[art_haykin]

Here, in King George's farms, this is call a "contingency fee" where the lawyer believes enough in the case to advance all costs and then take a large bite of any damages. It usually applies where large settlements are involved as in personal injury, or other criminal cases. Your particular case MAY just be civil in nature, and not too lucrative. Also, a US base attorney MAY not be able to get involved in a UK action. Ask around your local legal community.

[john_macpherson]

Thanks Art - I negelected to say that the company who have infringed my copyright are US based with a Michigan business address. But I take your point about the UK (based) action. This whole 'transnational' nature of the web raises interesting situations!

[joeb]

If the copyright was registered for the image before it was used with out your permission, the lawyer's fees could be part of the judgement. If the offending party had deep pockets you should be able to find someone.

 

The book copyright is on the collection of words and images. One word or image used somewhere else does not infringe on the book's copyright. If multiple images or passages of text were used, the owner of the book copyright could sue providing the copyright was registered. The book copyright alone will probibly not be enough to get lawyer's fees added to the judgement. To protect your image you need to register either here or in GB. You can still register the image and would need to do so before sueing. But to get statutory damages (lawyers fees) you need to register before the image is infringed or with in 90 days of the image entering commerce.

 

http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode17/usc_sec_17_00000505----000-.html

 

http://mainelaw.maine.edu/cli/documents/Defending_Swamp_Rock.PDF

[john_h.1]

Perhaps you might obtain a consult with Attorney Wright of www.photoattorney.com or get a referal to someone else if that does not work out.

[J.W. Wall]

Perhaps you could find a solicitor there who specializes in international law and intellectual property law. Such a person may be able to direct you to a U.S. attorney or to explain what such an action may entail. Good luck!

[christianrevolution]

You may want to contact "The Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts" there address is 1 e. 53rd st., 6th floor, New York NY 10022,

Phone # (212)319-2910.

"The VLA is a nonprofit organization, based in New York City, dedicated to providing all artists, including photographers, with sound legal advice."

They may be able to help.

I'm sorry you have to go through this.

God bless.

-Micah

[dai_hunter]

Several points John:

 

1) The Berne Convention would give you the right to sue in the US courts for infringement (by a US based entity) to the full extent that any US born and registered copyright can be pursued... EVEN THOUGH... your UK born work is not registered in the US. The only requirement (a' la Berne) is that any required formalities in the UK are met - and as you know there is no formal registration system in the UK such as there is in the US, but as that is the level of UK side "formality" that will meet the test, so be it.

 

2) There is probably little that can be done by way of the US courts because US lawyers usually won't take those cases on contingency, especially as they must be heard in the US federal courts unlike in the UK where any magistrates court can hear an infringement case, and where you can go even without a lawyer for both damages and an injunction.

 

3) If money damages are not important in this case so much as giving the infringer a sharp "whack on the pee-pee" the best and most straightforward approach is to nuke his website by way of a DMCA [Digital Millennium Copyright Act] complaint to his hosting provider.

 

If you contact me off-list I will lay out the details for you on doing that. I was into a case of my own by way of a DMCA complaint less than a month ago. Don't even be nice and contact the actual infringer directly and asking pretty please to not use the images... let him have the big surprise after the ISP/hosting company pulls the images off the web - as they are required to by law on receiving such a complaint. That complaints system doesn't even require that the infringer be informed at all until after the fact and his ISP/hosting provider will be doing the informing, to be sure.

 

Hunter

[john_macpherson]

Thanks everyone (and thanks for the offer of personal assistance Dai). FYI I invoked the DMCA via her ISP and also through Google, and gave the offender a huge fright. My misused images were removed imediately and she will likely be VERY cautious in future.

[kelly_flanigan1]

John; did you also approach them with a reasonable licensing fee, also crediting you with the image too? Long ago folks in the USA did this. Some photographers actually were hungry, needed rent money, and needed advertising. Today the business model seems to be lawyers, worshiping them, litigation is a major business today in the USA. A larger well established company would often prefer paying a reasonable licensing fee, then feeding the lawyers. <BR><BR>Today at our print shop folks bring in a mess of images from a mess of unknown sources. Once images get passed around the web a few times, the how to contact info gets lost, or stripped out, or watermarks removed. There are alot of images on Kazza and as Torrents too. With the current trend of lazyness and not watermarking, not imbedding any contact info, photographers are often abandoning their images to the masses. One wonders how the courts will view the current abandonment policies of photographers, maybe as gifts, throwing away ownership? With Patents, there has to be some attempt of the owner protecting their work. With many images today, photographers are giving them away. With wedding photographers in the USA many give out decent resolution CD's, and wrongly assume they can only make small prints. What happens is these get posted on a bride/grooms website, for the relatives to have. Often at the print shop we get orders to print up 5x7, 8x10, and 11x14's of these wedding images, they mostly are decent. The wedding photographer remains unknown, hiding from reprint work, with no earthly way of finding who they are. Our companies lawyer views this as legal printing work, since there is no contact info, no watermarks, no imbedded contact info in the file header, and all our wedding photographer customers have been contacted. Orders like this are often from out of town weddings, sometime the print order comes from an attorney who is our long term customer for decades. The business model for some images like wedding has moved to getting all the profit at the shoot, and then passing out high resolution CD's and giving away any future reprint work.