Bonjour,
J'ai reçu début Janvier un mail de robert.fechner[at]photography-defender.com concernant une image présente sur mon site dont je n'avais pas les droits (à savoir que cette image est présente sur de nombreux sites et que je n'avais aucune idée qu'elle était sous coypright).
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I hereby notify you that I was entrusted to represent the legal interest of the photographer Ivo Berg, Berlin () in this specific matter. In my capacity as an attorney, I hereby verify that I am duly authorized to act in this matter.
In the name and on the authority of my client I must inform you of the following state of affairs:
I.
My client was made aware by www.photoclaim.com that you have published a photograph taken by my client on the website under the URL
https://site.com/page
With this act of publication, you have violated the copyrights of my client.
The matter in dispute relates to the photograph reproduced in this letter which you are using in breach of the copyrights, with particular emphasis on the moral rights, of my client.
Your website has been secured by the company RightsPilot UG to the extent necessary for use as evidence in court and will be produced by way of such evidence in the event that you should contest the claim.
No agency that my client works with confirmed a license purchase from your side. Should you have a valid license, please forward us the licensing agreement. Unfortunately, you did not identify my client as the copyright owner as it would be due to an agreement.
II.
With the publication of the photograph, you have acted in violation of the copyrights due to my client as the holder of the copyright, in particular, the right to make works publicly available pursuant to section 19 a UrhG. There can be no doubt that the photograph is a copyrighted work within the meaning of the Copyright Act.
You are not entitled to disseminate the photograph, as you have done in flagrant disregard of the copyrights and moral rights of my client. The appropriation of third-party photographs without the consent of the rights holder represents a violation of copyright law. At no time did my client agree to the publication of the contested photograph in its present form.
I will also refer you to the Berne convention. It requires its signatories to recognize the copyrighted works of authors from other signatory countries (known as members of Berne Union) in the same way it recognizes the copyright of its own nationals. As both France and Germany signed this convention, my client’s rights are well protected in France no matter if they registered their works in the copyright office. Further The Application of German jurisdiction according to Art. 7 No. 2 of Regulation (EU) No. 1215/2012 (Brussels Ia) is beyond question.
This is verified – in reference to the predecessor regulation Art. 5 No. 3 of Regulation No. 44/2001 (Brussels I) – by the European Court of Justice in its judgment of 22nd of January 2015 (C 441/13), by the Treaty of Rome Art. 2 Abs. 1, as well as by the prominent verdict of the Bundesgerichtshof (Highest Court) in Germany (BGH, Urteil v. 21.4.2016, Az- I ZR 43/14), which states that a photograph must be merely publicly available in Germany in order to validly claim for “Cease and Desist”.
The deliberate act of incorporating the photograph into your website is sufficient reason for us to assert the contested use by you of the photograph in question. It has no bearing on the claims in the present matter whether the rights of my clients have been deliberately or merely accidentally violated. Instead, the sole focus of the present matter is on the fact that the photograph was used without consent in the manner described above.
III.
To effectively rule out the risk of any recurrence, it is necessary to issue a cease and desist declaration enforced by a penalty for the future.
I therefore request that a declaration to cease and desist is submitted by
08.01.2020.
On the last page of this letter, you will find a pre-formulated declaration to cease and desist enforced by a penalty, which you are at liberty to use. A jurisdiction clause is common practice that goes beyond the infringement notified. The reimbursement of damages and legal fees is a legal obligation and the placement thereof in the declaration also goes beyond the infringement notified. The reimbursement of damages and legal costs and the declaration to cease and desist are two claims that are not connected to each other. You are, of course, also free to draft your own declaration to cease and desist. I would, however, draw your attention to the risk that an incorrectly or inadequately formulated declaration may not be sufficient to obviate the risk of reoffending.
If we do not receive a signed declaration to cease and desist from you by the stipulated deadline, we will assume that you have declined to accept this obligation. In this case, I am instructed to take further legal action immediately.
IV.
Due to the unlawful use of photography by your party, we request you to pay damages. The amount of compensation depends, among other factors, on the duration of illegal use. For this reason, based on § 101 UrhG, we ask you to provide information. Please state for how long the subject of infringement was publicly available on your website.
In addition, in accordance with § 101 UhrG, you are also obliged to provide full information on a possible larger extent of the use of the photograph in question. Claims related to such extensive use are explicitly reserved.
Should you wish to claim that your party is not responsible for the copyright infringement, according to § 101 UhrG we claim for information in that regard. In such case, please provide all data at your disposal within the stipulated deadline as to who made the photograph in question publicly available.
We hope that a lawsuit will not be necessary and we will help you with any questions you may have.
Yours faithfully,
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J'ai donc rempli le cease and desist en toute bonne foi étant donné que je souhaitais être honnête et réparer mes torts.
Or par la suite cet avocat m'a demandé de payer 4000€ pour cette fameuse image !! Je ne suis à partir de ce moment là plus très d'accord au vu du montant.
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Thank you for your reply and for removing the photograph in question from your website and for signing the declaration which we herewith accept.
In my last writing, I made you aware of your infringement of my client’s copyright. This infringement of my client’s copyrights obliges you to pay compensation in pursuance of section 97 UrhG.
I.
By the way of license analogy, you have to pay my client the usual licensing fee. To provide transparency, my client applies the fees of the MFM-tables (Mittelstandsgemeinschaft Foto-Marketing) that represent an industry average fee and that are taken by the German courts to determine the fair compensation of a photographer. In your case this fee is:
Online Use, Subpage, 16.03.2015 - 16.12.2019
1,026.00 EUR
-
Lack of indication of source: +100%
1,026.00 EUR
Total
2,052.00 EUR
Interest
409.91 EUR
Total + interest
2,461.91 EUR
Since you should have paid my client the due licensing fee already from the date on which you have started to use his photograph, based on the Bürgerliches Gesetzbuch (BGB) § 288 (1) you are requested to cover as well the interest fee in the amount of 5% above the basic interest rate published in the German Federal Gazette by the German Central Bank.
The total damage is therefore set to the amount of 2,461.91 EUR.
II.
According to the law you also have to reimburse my client for the costs incurred by my involvement in this matter through the reimbursement of the business fee pursuant to no. 2300 of the remuneration schedule (VV) appended to the Lawyers’ Remuneration Act (RVG), as follows:
Value in dispute 8,052.00 EUR
Value in dispute 6,000.00 EUR (Order to Cease and Desist) and Value in dispute 2,052.00 EUR (Damage)
Business fee
Sections 2, 13, RVG, no. 2300 VV RVG (sentence 1.50)
760.50 EUR
Flat rate expenses no. 7002 VV RVG
20.00 EUR
Total legal costs
780.50 EUR
III.
Further, you have to pay for the cost of the documentation of the infringement, which is an amount of 95.00 EUR. Our client has ordered the documentation service RightsPilot UG to secure evidence usable in court. The documentation costs adequately represent a causal and unavoidable loss for my client and therefore you must reimburse this sum.
Regarding the eligibility of copyright documentation costs, see those representative examples of the following judgments:
AG Hamburg, Entscheidung vom 13.03.2012, Az. 26a C 84/12, AG Hamburg, Entscheidung vom 14.06.2012, Az. 35a C 40/12, AG Hamburg, Urteil vom 17.10.2011, Az. 36A C 368/10, AG Berlin-Charlottenburg, Urteil vom 29.11.2012, Az. 210 C 63/12, AG Stuttgart, Urteil vom 26.09.2012, Az. 50 C 4382/11, AG Berlin-Charlottenburg, Urteil vom 20.11.2012, Az. 225 C 196/12, AG Berlin-Charlottenburg, Urteil vom 02.09.2014, Az. 225 C 34/14, AG Berlin-Charlottenburg, Urteil vom 05.02.2009, Az. 239 C 282/08, AG Berlin-Charlottenburg, Urteil vom 08.08.2013, Az. 210 C 6/13, AG Stuttgart, Urteil vom 10.7.2012, Az. 2 C 3327/11, AG München, Entscheidung vom 31.03.2010, Az. 161 C 15642/09, AG Charlottenburg, Entscheidung vom 29.11.2012, Az. 201 C 273/12, LG Hamburg, Entscheidung vom 17.04.2009, Az. 308 O 612/08.
You are therefore required to make a total payment of:
Damages
2,461.91 EUR
Documentation
95.00 EUR
Legal fees
Grand total net
780.50 EUR
3,337.41 EUR
Sales tax DE 19.00%
634.11 EUR
Grand total
3,971.52 EUR
We expect receipt of this amount no later than 21.01.2020 to the bank account below:
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J'ai par la suite contacté quelqu'un qui avait été dans le même cas de figure que moi sur ce forum et il m'a dit qu'il a laissé coulé et qu'après de nombreuses relances et changements de montants à rembourser, cet avocat avait arrêté de le harceler et depuis plus aucune nouvelle (donc bonne nouvelle ?) depuis plusieurs mois.
Je voulais votre avis sur le sujet, et savoir si je pouvais également faire le mort ou si vous me conseilliez autre chose.
Merci infiniment pour vos réponses
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