The world's largest e-tailer is in the legal sights of adult industry magazine Perfect 10, which accuses Amazon's search engine subsidiary A9.com of infringement because search results show images for which Perfect 10 claims the copyright.
Perfect 10 filed against Amazon June 29, seven months after filing a similar suit against Google. The Google suit continues to await a hearing.
"We're trying real hard to stop the misappropriation of our intellectual property, and these guys keep showing 2,500 of our photos and linking to these websites showing additional photos," said Perfect 10 publisher Norman Zada. "It's going to be a big case."
Perfect 10 is accusing A9.com and Google alike of undercutting revenues by letting Web surfers view Perfect 10's exclusive images without paying. The magazine’s website charges $25 per month to see them.
A hearing on a preliminary injunction request in the Amazon litigation is scheduled for November 7, but Zada said he is attempting to file for a similar injunction against Google within a week and to get both motions heard at the same time. He said he approached both Amazon and Google several times asking them to delete the images from search results and took the matter to court only when the search giants didn't.
"The problem is the legal system is very backed up," Zada said, reiterating an observation he has made in the recent past regarding why a case like his might have a better chance of coming out in his favor on appeal than in trial court.
"We don't have enough judges and it's really hurting the plaintiffs,” Zada continued The judges are so overworked that things are postponed, and it's really a horrible system for the plaintiffs right now. It really is bad for the country. We have suffered so badly because judges are trying to get rid of those cases. They're desperate to reduce their workload, and it's a bad situation for copyright holders."
Amazon has declined comment on the Perfect 10 suit, at least until its legal staff has a chance to review it in full. Google already has filed a response saying it did nothing more than transmit data without linking intentionally to any stolen material, and that it did Perfect 10 and Zada a favor by making surfers more aware of his magazine's original work.
In July 2004, a federal judge held payment processors CCBill and iBill and a third adult company, Internet Key, not directly involved in any content infringement and thus immune to the charges of secondary infringement for which Perfect 10 had sued them. Two weeks after that decision, another federal judge held that Perfect 10 failed to show Visa and MasterCard actually induced any client to infringe any Perfect 10 trademark or image.
Zada has appealed both rulings to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, though he does not expect that court to hear the appeals until 2006 at the earliest. He does, however, believe he has a better chance of prevailing there.
