“Business corporations don’t have all the rights of persons in a lot of copyright dispute situations. For example Microsoft can take you to the cleaners for software that your business in fact bought, if you lose the receipts.”
I don’t think this is the same kind of case and the image, which has been cropped, has no tags and is barely recognizable and is 12 years old and has been handled by 3 agencies. I’m not going to pay. I might lose, but this is insane. They have yet to prove they have had the right to charge for the image and have never offered it for the last 12 years. I’ll start there, I guess. Don’t you have to prove you have the right to collect a bill before demanding payment? Two of the agencies are out of business...they were print only...the third says they can look and see if they any record, but don’t want to start a hunt through 12 years for nothing. Can’t blame them. i think they are just hoping people will pay to avoid the pain. I’m kinda into pain these days...
When my current business partner and I started our business, our former employer sued us for violating a “non-compete” agreement, which it wasn’t. They also accused of of several practices (stealing client list, stealing employees, stealing “proprietary” formulas, which were developed by NIOSH, ACGIH, and OSHA and used industry wide). We spent about 10k for a lawyer. We had witnesses (myself included) and documentation that they had obtained client lists, price lists, employee lists of their major competitor in our town when they opened their office. We were asking for a directed judgement. One week before we were to go to court, they dropped the lawsuit. Our “non-compete” was a common form letter stating that we wouldn’t release proprietary information, not an agreement not to start a competing company, which we would never have been so stupid as to sign.