Getty Images has sued Microsoft this week in New York federal court Thursday alleging Microsoft’s new photo publishing tool is a “massive” copyright infringement.
The dispute is over a Microsoft widget that allows website owners to publish a panel on their sites displaying photo search results from Bing.
Getty claims the widget violates copyright law with the many Getty-owned images that appear in the widget.
Microsoft took the Bing image widget system, which was in beta, down. So Looks like the Big M is taking Getty’s lawsuit seriously.
May Lawyers said the case will be around the Fair Use part of Copyright law. Fair use allows copyrighted material to be used for certain purposes such as teaching, news reporting, commentary and parody.
In the past many lawsuits against Google have largely determined that thumbnail pictures in search results are fair use.
But this isn’t search results. Getty has issue with the images appearing on third-party websites.
