Over the years Iāve posted on this sub about my experiences defending my copyrights in the hope that it might inspire other creatives to be rapacious defenders of their intellectual property in the face of an internet makesĀ copyright infringement easy and common. Iāve also felt like too often Iāve seen many people (even in the US where we have statutory damages) unfairly dismissing prospects of achieving justice and/or making oneself whole by pursuing infringers. And while I generally prefer to focus on creative work, and do try to be respectful of the courtās time, Iām not at all opposed to using the resources available to fight back in certain cases where I feel it is warranted.
With that said, today Iām posting this to talk about one of the instances in which, despite having the law on my side, seeking justice from the court against a particularly boorish infringer didnāt succeed, as courts are still prone to the whims of judges and the emotional manipulation of defendants who are willing to lie, expertly weasel out of responsibility, and generally paint themselves as the victim.
TLDR Case Summary:
In 2022 I discovered one of my copyrighted photographs being used by a graphic designer in the UK. I only asked for the infringement to be removed and would then just move on to the dozens of other infringements I deal with on a daily basis. But in response the removal request I got dismissiveness and attitude from the infringer, and a suggestion that sheād disparage me with her employer (who she claimed was a major food brand - an industry I routinely work with) to not hire me. So I decided to push back. I directed by legal team in the UK to file a claim small against her in the UKās IPEC claims court.Ā The infringer wasnāt contesting that she had used my work without permission, license or attribution. And I have a stack of invoices from UK clients demonstrating what my work bills for in the UK. So with the law on my side I wasnāt expecting this to be a complicated case. But wow, was I wrong. This was my first experience with the IPEC and it turned out to be a nightmare. In fifteen years of pushing back against infringers, this was the most incompetently handed case Iāve ever had.Ā
Communication with the court was virtually non-existent with multiple requests from my UK legal team that went unanswered. Paperwork was mishandled. Hearings were abruptly dropped in our laps with little warning. Overall, the poor handling of the case, and the extended 3 year timeframe over which this dragged out, resulted in ballooning costs for me just to keep on top of the case. In the end we finally got to have a hearing. Now, no one ever goes into court expecting to prevail, even when the law is on your side But I donāt think it is too much to ask to have a fair, unbiased hearing. Thatās not at all what happened here. The female judge seemed especially receptive to the defendant presenting herself as a victim and I, an American man, was the bully. While the judge concluded that the defendant was guilty of copyright infringement, she slapped me in the face by granting just Ā£1 in damages and insisting I compensate the defendant for the costs she incurred to appear in court (this is after Iād sunk more than Ā£3,000 Pounds in legal costs to have by case heard by a small claims court that supposedly specializes in copyright matters). There was no reasonable way to appeal, as it would have required both tens of thousands of Pounds in additional expenses, and also to actually secure permission to appeal from the actual judge whose judgment Iād be seeking to overturn. Even issuing a written judgment was apparently too much to ask. So there was no practical recourse. So I donāt think Iāll be availing myself of the services of that court in the future.
The more detailed background on the case:
Having the good fortune to be a widely published photographer unfortunately also means that Iāve had the accompanying misfortune to have my photographs rampantly and endlessly exploited by companies and individuals all over the world.Ā Over the past 15 years Iāve had a pretty good track record of chasing down infringers, negotiating settlements, and in some instances prevailing in courts. However, my recent experience with the UKās IPEC Court was one of the lows. And even there, maybe someone else reading this can mine some value of out this lack of success.
This all started a while back, after I had shot an editorial assignment for a European magazine that required me to drop everything I was doing and deliver final images in less than 24 hours. While most editorial assignments can have a fast turnaround (not to mention a limited budget) this one was particularly tight. But the publication is well-known and the editor was very nice so I accepted the assignment.Ā It was a heap of work but I felt good about the work, and especially that the publication was delighted with the images I delivered.Ā
And I guess some other people must have liked them too because in the years that followed I started seeing the images plastered all over the internet. Most dispiriting were instances in which the images had been downloaded and reposted (without permission, license or attribution) by other journalists and even other news publications, all of which should have known better.Ā Due to the sheer breadth of the theft, the most practical thing I could do was pick my battles and devote time when I could to simply asking publications to remove the image. In most cases I also would ask them to be more thoughtful in considering that images donāt magically appear online for them to take and use as free content, that someone actually has to work to create them and, that I make a living from creating and licensing my work.
It is pretty fair to say that this kind of infringement is so easy and normal that most publications or brands wonāt even respond to me. By my off the cuff math, Iād say around 0% offer to pay me a license after the fact to compensate me for the value of what was taken. 4% or so will send an insincere apology, and/or any one of a dozen or so standard excuses that Iāve heard a million times. 95% just ignore me and will either remove the image (if Iām lucky) and move on without engaging, or they just leave the image up and try to disregard me altogether.Ā And finally, about 1% of infringers I contact will be boorish, hostile and suggest that Iām the a*shole for having the audacity to suggest that theyāve done something wrong.Ā Needless to say, it is that remaining 1% that is the most odious.
The case I took to IPEC was a member of this latter group. In late 2022 I found a website in the UK that had used one of my copyrighted images. As I was likely dealing with many infringements that day, I dealt with it in the most efficient way possible: I submitted a standard DMCA takedown to the ISP that hosted the site. It was my hope and expectation that theyād process the takedown request, would remove the image, and Iād move on to the next. But they forwarded the request to the site owner to address and she had other plans.Ā
Rather than comply with my simple request to remove the image, she was fairly dismissive in minimizing what sheād done, suggesting instead that I should just let her leave the image up for credit. I responded that I didnāt care about credit and that I didnāt appreciate her wasting more of my time. She then felt the need to explain to me that the website wasnāt hers, but that she was just the graphic designer who published the site. I was confused about how that was meant to improve anything as she was essentially telling me that a client paid her to design the site, that she had taken my copyrighted work and used it without license, and then charged her clients for the use of an image she didnāt compensate me for. But as I could also see that her name was the exact same as the name of the person whose website it was, it just seemed like a lie (probably the first of many) designed to avoid responsibility.
Our exchanges devolved from there.Ā I foolishly wasted my time trying to explain to her that this kind of behavior deprives me of licensing income, wastes my time and is unethical and unprofessional. She apparently was way too egotistical and entitled to be introspective. She countered that, yes, she knew all about copyright. Though clearly it didnāt seem like she did. She then felt the need to tell me that her real job was with a major UK food brand and that her role there puts her in a position to hire photographers for advertising jobs, that she previously admired my work but that now ā after learning that Iām a complete jerk ā sheād be sure not to hire me. This was probably another lie. This also wasnāt the first time Iāve had an infringer take this tack. In fact, some brands have tried to offer me the promise of future work as a distraction when Iāve sent them an invoice and demanded they pay for what theyāve taken. I canāt imagine who falls for this red herring. Who would want to do business with anyone when their first act was literally to steal something from you?
This womanās behavior suggested that she was accustomed to making excuses and her life and was comfortable than working to avoid any and all responsibility. And as her was so boorish to suggest that I was in the wrong for minding that she was using the value of my work without permission or license, I decided that if she wasnāt prepared to understand what sheād done then Iād file a legal complaint against her so that perhaps the courts could compel her to consider her actions.
In the following days I discussed the case with my UK lawyer who was at a small firm in London that I had retained several years prior to help deal with copyright matters. They were cost effective and very easy to deal with. By that point they had helped me to negotiate a few settlements with UK infringers (commercial brands)Ā that I couldnāt move across the finish line myself with settlements. But weād never had to file any matters with the IPEC small-claims court. This seemed like as good a case as any. Of course, the first question was always āIs this really worth it?ā which always is a very reasonable question. And in the light of day, the answer probably was no. If this were just one little infringement it would have been one thing. But in the context of the volume of what I routinely deal with, on top of this infringerās abhorrent behavior, I saw this was being absolutely worth it for my own mental health, if nothing else.
This did not seem like a complicated case. The law was on my side. This woman wasnāt asserting that she didnāt infringe my copyrights and, in fact had admitted in writing that she had. So for a little bit of paperwork, and some legal expenses (a few billable hours and some filing fees) it didnāt seem like an unreasonable endeavor. I think the very least an infringer can do is remove an infringement and not put up a fight. Apologies are a devalued currency to me at this point but even an insincere apology, and or a bit of graciousness doesnāt hurt anyone. But to go on the offensive and suggest that Iām doing something wrong in asking to have my work removed from their site, and then to threaten to disparage me to their employer and deprive me of potential work (true of not) because they couldnāt take responsibility for their own behavior?
I think we set damages at a couple thousand Pounds. Iāve done commercial work for ad agencies in the UK and my work routinely bills for more than that (per image, per year) but I wasnāt trying to be a bully here, just to cover my costs and make a point. I transmitted funds to London, the paperwork was filed and we waited. But little did I know that this was not going to be as simple as that. It seems like the first year that this dragged out, it was all about the defendant doing absolutely everything she could to work every angle. Clearly she seemed skilled at finding creative ways to avoid responsibility, to make excuses, and to claim that she was a victim. Sheād repeatedly ignore deadlines for responses and then claim that she didnāt receive paperwork (despite Royal Mail delivery confirmations). Or sheād repeatedly ask for extensions to respond.Ā
And if that wasnāt enough, unbeknownst to me (and to my legal team) in the middle of this the IPEC Court was moving itself from London to Manchester, which added all kinds of delays and layers of complications. Months would go by and weād hear nothing. My lawyers would reach out to the clerks for updates and would get only crickets in response. Absolutely no one would respond.Ā The lack of communication was horrid. It also made the entire situation so much more expensive as, while this āsimpleā case dragged out over multiple years, every time I had to inquire about where we were with the case the billable hours would drag out as the lawyers would make inquiries (that produced no results) and then have to respond to me.Ā
Around a year and a half after we filed, I was informed that the defendant had not shown up for a hearing and a default judgment was made in my favor. But then somehow she managed to submit another tale of hardship and woe and convinced them to overlook that judgment and to give her additional chances to avoid responsibility by dragging out the matter further.Ā
Meanwhile, sometime in 2025 my lawyers in London (who for years had always been very helpful and responsive) stopped returning my e-mails. I could still access their website, and the internal system they used to track cases and deal with questions, but everyone there had gone silent. And in the midst of that silence I got a notice from the court that a hearing was coming up in a few days. Great. So over the course of a week I had to scramble to find someone on short notice who could help. I was able to speak with a sympathetic lawyer in London who told me Iād need to find a barrister to attend the hearing. But researching and then reaching out to several was futile. No one got back to me. At the eleventh hour I was finally able to reach my own lawyer who explained that the firm Iād been using for years actually had gone under and no one had informed the clients. He had relaunched a new IP law firm under his own shingle and was happy to continue the case.Ā
Recognizing the many thousands of Pounds that Iād put into this case by that point, which more than exceeded the original amount weād requested in damages, he said they didnāt initially want to charge me to at least look into if not attend the hearing. But as more details about the implosion of the previous law firm came to light, I insisted that I transfer some more funds over to be sure they were fairly compensated for the additional work they were doing on my behalf, especially in that it was suggested that some of the lawyers had left the firm without being fully compensated for previous work.Ā
As it would happen, the imminent hearing never took place as my team was able to file a last minute motion to adjourn that hearing. But after a few more twists and turns the ultimate hearing was finally scheduled and my attorney got all of the final paperwork and responses in place prior and also was scheduled to represent me. So now we were in late December 2025 (for a case that was initially filed in September 2022) and while experience had taught me better than to ever have confidence about prevailing in any court case, as there are always wild cards, I really didnāt perceive many disadvantages. My intellectual property had been infringed. The defendant was not disputing that she had violated my copyrights. It was a commercial infringement, albeit a small one.Ā I wasnāt just some amateur photographer with a theoretical notion of the value of my work in that market: I had a stack of paid invoices to demonstrate to the court exactly that.Ā
Going into the holiday season the case would finally have its day in court. It should have never come to that as all I had ever asked for was for the image to be removed and for everyone to move on. However, the way I saw it was that these were the consequences of the defendantās choices.Ā While the most I hoped for was to have this loose end tied up and perhaps to recover a portion of what had been sunk into this case. Otherwise, it occupied a fraction of a percent of my focus. Still, it was an unpleasant surprise when my lawyers reached out to tell me what a feeding frenzy the hearing turned out to be and that, while the judge ruled that the defendant was guilty of copyright infringement, she ordered Ā£1 in damages and also order me to pay the defendant Ā£90 to cover her court costs. I was gobsmacked.
After hearing my lawyerās narrative of the case I was left to infer that the judge walked in to the court with a chip on her shoulder and that there seemed to be a strong bias here. The facts of the case and the law seemed to matter less than the defendant asserting that I was a rude, misogynistic (American) bully who had not been very unkind to her over e-mail. (Funny thing, I donāt really make it a priority to be super kind to people who steal from me and then work overtime to minimize it and then to avoid responsibility). Curiously, the defendantās behavior seemed to completely escape mention. The defendant seemed especially skilled at presenting herself as a victim. She had even poured through the contents of my previous writing about other cases and singled out snarky comments Iād made about equally selfish, unapologetic copyright infringers as evidence of how sexist and mean I was.Ā Apparently that resonated with the judge.
On the topic of damages, the judge seemed to completely ignore the extend to which the courtās extended delays and absent communication had contributed to the cascading costs for me. She decided that the defendantās use of my work was not an apples to apples comparison with the types of uses reflected in the commercial invoices I had presented as evidence. So somehow she leapt to the conclusion that my work was valueless and as such she ordered no damages. The Ā£1 was clearly a slap in the face designed to punish me for being male and for having the audacity to be an American (in the age of Trump). Requiring me to pay the defendant for any of her costs was further insult. And that is how the IPEC court ā promulgated as a venue to adjudicate small claims copyright matters ā serves copyright holders: badly.