NEW YORK—Serial litigant Perfect 10 is suing the photo blogging platform Tumblr, alleging the infringement of at least 200 of its images. The 10-page complaint was filed Friday in U.S. District Court in the Southern District of New York.
"This is an action by Perfect 10 for copyright infringement arising from the rampant and unremedied uploading, display and distribution of Perfect 10's copyrighted photographs on the photograph-sharing website Tumblr without Perfect 10's approval and over Perfect 10's repeated objections," the complaint reads.
The complaint continues, "During September, October and December 2011, Perfect 10 sent six (6) compliant DMCA Notices to Tumblr requesting that the infringing content be taken down. Tumblr has ignored its obligations under the DMCA. As of the date of this filing, Tumblr has failed to completely process anyof Perfect 10's DMCA notices, taking down at most only a handful of the over 200 infringing images identified by Perfect 10, many of which had Perfect 10 copyright notices or watermarks conspicuously placed on the images."
In addition to the allegations mentioned above, Perfect 10 also claims that "Tumblr employees have posted infringing content to Tumblr servers, to help start the business, including content which infringes upon Perfect 10's Copyrighted Works," and that "Tumblr turns a blind eye to the extensive copyright infringement taking place through its services."
The complaint claims that Tumblr has contained "over 200 infringing images identified by Perfect 10, many of which had Perfect 10 copyright notices or watermarks conspicuously placed on the images," and is seeking, in addition to attorneys' fees and costs, "an amount to be proven at trial, but not less than $5 million; or (b) in the alternative, statutory damages of up to $150,000 per Copyrighted Work infringed as provided by Section 504(c) of the Copyright Act for Tumblr's willful infringement."
The filing of the Tumblr complaint comes one week after U.S. Judge A. Howard Matz finally brought the gavel down on Perfect 10 v Google, the interminable copyright infringement lawsuit brought by Perfect 10's Norm Zada in 2004.
"Pursuant to the Stipulation of the parties, the Court hereby dismisses this action with prejudice. No appeal may be taken, and no motion to alter, amend or be relieved from the judgment in this action may be filed, by either party. Each party shall bear its own attorney’s fees and costs," the final order read.
Google says that Perfect 10 requested that the case be closed. “We always asserted that there was no merit to this case. Plaintiff seemed to agree: last week he asked for a dismissal of the case with prejudice," Google told TorrentFreak in reply to a request for comment.
In court filings, Perfect 10 commented, "Perfect 10 agrees not to commence any future lawsuit against Google in any court arising from any such Google act or omission on or before the date of dismissal of this action, or any such DMCA notices sent by Perfect 10 on or before the date of dismissal of this action."
Tumblr, on the other hand...
The Perfect 10 Tumblr complaint can be read here.
