Microsoft responds to Getty legal

gavelA lawsuit issued by Getty Images against Microsoft last week has resulted in the software giant climbing down.

Getty Images alleged that Microsoft threatened its vast library of copyright images with a widget for its search engine called Bing Image.  That beta software allowed people to embed images into their own web site.

But Getty complained that gave access to its images and threatened its business. It said in its allegation against Microsoft that Bing trawled the website and found as many images as was possible, and copied and indexed every image it came across, ignoring the copyright status of the pictures and without asking permission from copyright owners.

Now Microsoft has taken down the widget saying on its website only that it had temporarily removed it. No doubt its legal advisors are talking to Getty’s legal advisors.