Geeksisters in court due to warning by HGM

Some employees of getDigital run a blog on the side - more or less for fun - for which we at getDigital provide the infrastructure (web server and such) and also provide legal support. One of these blogs is Geeksisterswhere we try to present geeky topics from a female perspective. A few months ago, Geeksisters received a warning: In a nutshell, it's about a photo of a cake in the shape of a snake that an English baker baked, photographed and published on her Facebook page in August 2012. The photo went viral and was shared by many blogs, including Geeksisters. At first, the baker was happy about the attention, but a few months later she received a warning from the German company HGM, which at least claims to have bought the rights to the image. HGM has not only warned Geeksisters, but also a whole series of other blogsThe warning was issued not only for the snake cake image but also for many other images. It seems that HGM's business model is to buy images that have become famous through bloggers and then sue these bloggers for license payments. The geeksisters also have more details about the whole thing.

As I said, getDigital is providing legal support for Geeksisters and since we consider HGM's actions to be absurd, we have decided not to give in to the warning letter but to take the matter to court. I am writing this blog post from the car on the way to Hamburg, where HGM has filed a lawsuit (Hamburg is known for its copyright-friendly decisions). However, in a similar case against Ronny from Kraftfuttermischwerk a few days ago, HGM won. lostso our chances are not bad, but unfortunately you can never say for sure in court. Of course, we will report on the result here after the trial and on our Twitter account a little earlier (but unfortunately not live, as there are not enough of us on site).

So, keep your fingers crossed for us, the court hearing starts at 9:20 am. If anyone else wants to watch spontaneously: The trial is in the Hamburg district courtcourtroom A019.

Update: The hearing is now over and it went pretty well. Only their lawyer was there for HGM, there were 5 of us (three of us, two of our lawyers and Thomas from Not without a trace). It started with the judge explaining for at least 5 minutes that he saw even fewer chances for HGM than in the case against Ronny vom Kraftfuttermischwerk, which had already been lost before the regional court. The regional court had already criticized the fact that HGM had not managed to prove conclusively who exactly had which rights to the image and when. The problem is that you need so-called active legitimation to be able to issue a warning to someone and you only have this if you have been granted exclusive rights to the images. The judge saw the presentation of the chain of rights as problematic, just like the regional court, and he also said that we had argued that Spiegel Online had written that they had been offered the same image by HGM for EUR 25. Since HGM did not dispute this, the judge saw no reason to charge more than EUR 50 for the license costs (HGM had originally demanded around EUR 800). He also found it problematic that the photographer posted the image on Facebook after she had (allegedly) relinquished the rights. This would have made her liable for damages and this at least suggests that something is not quite right with the chain of rights. So the whole thing went pretty well :) HGM's lawyer didn't actually say much, but only presented another original confirmation from the photographer, which didn't explain the chain of rights any further. The judge then suggested that HGM withdraw the lawsuit and that we waive the right for HGM to reimburse us for any costs. Such a "settlement proposal" alone is of course already quite blatantly negative for HGM, but of course it is quite unsatisfactory if we are left sitting on our costs. The judge even added that we could then agree to keep quiet, which is of course out of the question and I said so. Nevertheless, HGM wanted to consider accepting the judge's offer at his leisure, i.e. sometime a few days later. We only said that we would also have to consult with our lawyer. With that, the hearing was almost over, the judge only said that he would give HGM another chance to submit written evidence that they had sufficient rights. He has set a deadline of June 13 for this and if nothing substantial is submitted by then, he will dismiss the case, which means that HGM will have to bear all the costs, including the majority of our legal fees. He will then announce the decision on July 4. I don't think it could have gone much better :) Many thanks again to Thomas for his moral support on site and of course to everyone who kept their fingers crossed for us! This is how it should always go in warning cases and you can see that it can be worth fighting back!