Facts

On October 11, 2022, Michael Grecco Productions sued ImageSelect B.V. for copyright infringement and violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Defendant is an online company organized in, and whose principal place of business is in the Netherlands.

PLAINTIFF'S CONTENTIONS: According to plaintiff, in 2012, it entered Contributor Agreements with RGB Ventures LLC d/b/a SuperStock. The agreements granted Superstock limited licenses to certain copyrighted material in plaintiff's portfolio. Pursuant to the agreements, SuperStock entered into a distributor agreement with defendant ImageSelect that would allow access to plaintiff's images on its website: http://www.imageselect.eu. Through this website, defendant allegedly reproduced, displayed, distributed and offered license rights to photographs and other content. In exchange, defendant would receive revenue from users paying to download images from its website.

In December 2013, the agreements were terminated though purportedly providing SuperStock continued licensing rights over plaintiff's images for an 18-month period. However, plaintiff contended that SuperStock continued to use and profit from plaintiff's work after the expiration of that 18-month period and plaintiff sued SuperStock in USDC Florida. According to plaintiff, judgment was entered in its favor and SuperStock and all its agents, including defendant, were prohibited from using plaintiff's copyrighted works thereafter.

DEFENDANT'S CONTENTIONS: Defendant argued that plaintiff's complaint suffered from jurisdictional issues: no specific, personal jurisdiction over defendant. The complaint did not include allegations that defendant expressly aimed its website operations at California, and though district courts may exercise jurisdiction over foreign defendants, Calder v. Jones, required defendant's "tortious" actions be expressly aimed at the United States. As this required plaintiff to show more than operating a website accessible to the United States, plaintiff failed to establish this element.

Result

The court agreed with defendant and dismissed plaintiff's claims for lack of personal jurisdiction.