The first thing one sees upon entering the New York Southern District Federal Court in Manhattan is a large circular plaque of the man who gives the courthouse its name. “Thurgood Marshall”, reads the inscription, “American Hero.”
Just before 2pm last Friday another hero walked down the courthouse steps. Almost four years after two of the biggest names in the photography business stole eight of his images of the 2010 Haiti earthquake, then used all their legal resources to try to crush him, photographer Daniel Morel emerged triumphant. After a week of drama and humiliation in court, Agence France Presse and Getty Images had been ordered to pay Morel $1.22m damages for wilful copyright infringement and violations of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
It’s hard to overstate the calamity that has befallen AFP and Getty. The $1.22m damages — the maximum possible — awarded to Morel are what garnered the headlines, but they are merely the tip of the iceberg that ripped through the AFP and Getty edifice last Friday afternoon. For one thing the financial costs will be far higher. Nobody knows for sure what the meter is running at, but informed legal sources put the total so far at around $9m: that includes the damages, Morel’s legal defence costs, and those of AFP and Getty. As the losing defendants the agencies will almost certainly be expected to pick up the entire tab.
But — really — it’s not all about the money. Far more serious to AFP and Getty than any financial cost is the damage done to their professional reputations. They now inhabit a unique position in the history of the photography business: the only major digital licensors to have been found liable in a Federal court for the wilful violation of a photojournalist’s copyrights in his own works.
AFP and Getty lost for three reasons. First, they were guilty as sin: the evidence showed that. But of course guilt doesn’t necessarily mean you lose in court, especially when you’ve got the best law money can buy sitting on your side of the courtroom.
Which leads to the second reason: the agencies had invested heavily in legal firepower, but not wisely. How heavily? Both Getty and AFP had four US attorneys in court, and the French agency supplemented their team with a further three lawyers from Paris: a total of eleven lawyers in all. Then there were the paralegals, assistants and witnesses: the defence teams occupied the entire left hand well of the court and spilled over into the public gallery. Taken as a whole, the entire defence all but outnumbered the rest of the court, including the Morel team, the judge, the courtroom staff and the jury.
View the entire story, including follow-up from AFP Photo Director.