Getty Images has filed a lawsuit against Microsoft at a federal court in New York claiming "massive infringement" of its copyrighted images though it’s Bing Image Widget.
Bing Image Widget allows website publishers to create and embed panel consisting of digital images on their own websites that displays images found in Bing.
Getty claims that most of the images that website creators use using the new widget belong to Getty.
Getty Images lawsuit cited by Reuters said: "In effect, defendant has turned the entirety of the world’s online images into little more than a vast, unlicensed ‘clip art’ collection for the benefit of those website publishers who implement the Bing Image Widget, all without seeking permission from the owners of copyrights in those images."
Getty images also offer similar widget for developers, but it is only available for non- commercial websites and the use of images require credit to the photographers.
Bing Image Widget is used by websites around the world and Getty claims it owns about 80 million images.
Getty also claims that Microsoft gets economic value out of the widget, because clicking an image in the widget display panels redirects the user to Microsoft’s Bing image search website.
