Getty Images, an American stock photo agency has filed a lawsuit against Microsoft for copyright infringement. According to Getty Images the Microsoft Bing Image widget which can be embedded on websites is "massive infringement" of copyrighted images.
Microsoft released the Bing Image Widget last month which gives publishers the ability to create a panel on their websites that displays digital images supplied by Bing Image Search. According to Getty Images is Microsoft also using images for which it doesn't have a license. A large amount of those images is owned by Getty Images, according to the company.
It's unclear how large of a compensation the company is demanding from Microsoft, the company states it's still calculating. Getty Images claims the widget is already widely used on the internet which will contribute to the height of the compensation.
"As a copyright owner ourselves we think the laws in this area are important," a spokeswoman of Microsoft told Reuters in an email. "We'll take a close look at Getty's concerns."
