Legal Question in Intellectual Property in Illinois

I got a letter from Masterfile that we had used one of their images without license and they are asking 8900.00 for it. We developed our website in July 2005. It was done by one of our part time college employee and we did try to get the images legally from bigstockphoto.com (got the proof). bigstockphoto has history of all the photos we downloaded except ONE... and masterfile is claiming on one picture. We don't know if the missing picture on bigstockphoto is the same one masterfile is claiming..

Question: We tried to do the right thing by gettting license... Please advise on the best route given our scenerio.


Asked on 10/08/10, 6:55 pm

1 Answer from Attorneys

Who wrote you - them or their attorneys? If the did you can try to call and talk to the person who wrote the letter and explain what happened and see if removing the image will appease them. If you heard from their attorneys who are not house counsel, you can still try calling, but they may refer you to the attorneys and I would make the same offer as a starter. If you get pushback you will need to consider asking an attorney to assist you because they're not just trying to protect their rights, they're out to get your $$$ even if you use was innocent.

While I am an active member of the Illinois Bar, this Answer is intended solely as a courtesy to the Questioner based on an incomplete set of facts, so that the Questioner can be encouraged to obtain proper and complete legal advice based on all of the necessary facts.

This is not meant as a definitive answer but a general narrative to assist you in heading in the right direction. Any law cited or referred to specifically or generally may or may not apply to a specific set of facts. We nevertheless hope this is of some help to you.

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Answered on 10/13/10, 8:24 pm


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