LOS ANGELES—In 2005, seven months after suing Google for infringing its copyrighted works by posting thumbnail versions of its photos in search results, Perfect 10 and owner Norm Zada did the exact same thing with Amazon. After years of roller-coaster rulings by a variety of courts—with most going against Perfect 10—the parties in the Amazon lawsuit settled their differences Tuesday in a federal courthouse in Los Angeles.
"Lawyers for Amazon.com and Perfect 10...said the companies had settled the case," reports Business Week. "Terms of the settlement were confidential and wouldn’t be disclosed, Jeffrey Mausner, a lawyer for Perfect 10, said after the hearing. Anthony Malutta, a lawyer for Amazon.com, declined to comment."
In the last major pronouncement on the cases, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in 2007 ultimately ruled neither Google nor Amazon directly infringed Perfect 10's copyright by posting thumbnail images, but the appellate panel kicked the question of secondary liability back to disctrict court.
"Both the District Court and the Ninth Circuit panel found that Perfect 10 had a clear copyright to at least some of the images in question, and since Google did reproduce tiny versions of those images ("thumbnails"), the District Court ruled that Perfect 10 would probably succeed in establishing at trial that Google had violated its copyright," Mark Kernes wrote at the time. "The question then became, as the Ninth Circuit framed it, whether Google could show that it could prove 'fair use' under the Copyright Act and/or the [Digital Millennium Copyright Act] as a legitimate defense. While the Ninth Circuit absolved Google (and later Amazon.com) of any direct liability for infringing on Perfect 10's images, it refrained from doing so on the question of secondary liability."
While Perfect 10 continues to insist that Google has violated DMCA provisions and thus lost its "fair use" protection, instead of going back into court for a full trial to determine the secondary liability aspects of Amazon.com's linkage to full-sized Perfect 10 images on third-party sites, the two parties apparently have decided to settle their differences privately.
It remains to be seen whether Perfect 10 and Google arrive at a similar understanding.
