De minimis doctrine misapplied in copyright case

Trial Notebook

By Steven P. Garmisa

Hoey & Farina

Posted November 4, 2021 10:54 AM

Richard N. Bell took some nice photos of the Indianapolis skyline. A retired attorney who has been called a “copyright troll,” Bell posted them at richbellphotos.com. Then, using Google’s “reverse image search” to find copies on other websites, he sued more than 200 companies for allegedly infringing on his copyrights. One of the targets, Wilmott Storage Services, apparently purchased a website, VisitUSA.com, that had one of Bell’s photos buried on its server. The image was entombed so deep that members of the public …

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