Every time you submit a case to Pixsy, our in-house team and external legal network review your case prior to taking action. We want to help as many creatives as possible to recover lost compensation. There are some scenarios where we are unable to pursue cases. When in doubt, it never hurts to submit a case for review, however, being able to recognize what makes a solid legal case is important.
Here is what our case managers and legal partners look for:
- The website displaying your work operates from a Pixsy supported country (see below)
- The website is a commercial business, major publication, organization, institution or government agency
- The website is fully operational and regularly updated
- There are no open questions about past licensing or conflicts with stock agencies
Supported Countries
In order for Pixsy to be able to initiate a legal pursuit, the image user’s business should have a contact or office address in one of these countries:
- United States
- Canada
- United Kingdom
- Germany
- Austria
- Switzerland
- The Netherlands
- Belgium
- Australia
- Japan
- Luxembourg
- Italy
- France
- Israel
- South Africa
- Spain
- Greece
- New Zealand
- Singapore
You can always check the “Contact” and “About” pages of the website if you aren’t sure. If the language of the site using your images is in Chinese or Russian, we probably won’t be able to accept that case.
Commercial, editorial or organizational use
Pixsy’s case resolution service can help you recover compensation in situations where unauthorized commercial, editorial or organizational use has occurred.
You can see examples of sites that aren’t a good fit for Pixsy Resolution right here. As always, feel free to submit a case if you aren’t sure, or ask our support team.
Our Legal Partners Viability Criteria
Our law firms will generally take action on a case when several of the following criteria are met:
- The image user has an established office with clear contact information
- The image user’s website and social media accounts are regularly updated
- The site looks like a legitimate business, organization or publication
On the other hand, our law firms often will likely not take on cases if one or several of the following elements are true – due to a low chance of recovery:
- The website is hosted directly on a cookie-cutter platform like Wix, Weebly, or Shopify
- The website has broken links, incomplete pages, and hasn’t been regularly updated
- The website is donation or volunteer-based
- The website appears to be a part-time project or hobby
You can always send a takedown notice through Pixsy if our law firms decide not to pursue your case.
No open questions about past licenses
When Pixsy contacts an image user, we want to be confident that the use is unlicensed. Therefore, double-check and make sure that you did not sell the image to a client, at some point in the past. If you work with stock photo agencies, it’s also important to do the following:
- Verify that your agencies did not license the work. The best way to do this is to contact the agency and get their confirmation (see our guide here). We understand that many stock agencies do not provide full records, and this may be a good opportunity to reevaluate who you partner with.
- If possible, retract the image from your stock agencies. Image users may attempt to resolve the matter of unauthorized use with your stock agency instead of through Pixsy, and we’ve found that microstock agencies will often try to settle matters for the benefit of their client rather than the photographer.
We hope this provides a good overview of what makes a good case, with Pixsy. Of course, if you have any questions, don’t hesitate to get in touch.