Getty Images Inc. filed a lawsuit last month against Microsoft because of their Bing Image Widget. After the lawsuit was filed, Microsoft took the product down.
However, that did not stop Getty from continuing to file an injunction on a product that is no longer live — and, expectedly, they did not manage to convince the U.S. District Judge Denise Core to grant one. Getty had been hoping for an injunction that would stop the Bing Images Widget from ever coming back.
Microsoft clarified that if they did launch a new version of the widget, it would include search filters, attribution notices, and other copyright details. This is the obvious solution, as the Bing Image Widget provided a slideshow or canvas of pictures picked off from the internet without any citation or licensing.
Getty Images has a competing product, but it is only used on non-commercial websites and includes attribution to the photographer. The company also owns more than 80 million images, which were showing up in the Bing Image Widget, leading to the lawsuit.
We will have to wait and see if Microsoft releases a similar tool, but one that satisfies image providers as well.
Reminder: if you did use the widget in a web page, as we had as an example when first reporting on this lawsuit, it will no longer be there.
