14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft and Getty Images have decided to give up on their legal dispute and instead sign a partnership deal that would allow the two companies to collaborate on a number of projects that they say could “enhance the Microsoft user experience.”
Getty sued Microsoft last year, after claiming that the Bing Image Widget, which allows webmasters to embed Getty images on their websites, infringed its copyright, as it provided access to photos that it owned without authorization.
Microsoft removed the widget completely shortly after that and explained that no copyright infringement took place because webmasters were only allowed to embed the photos and not to actually get them.
The lawsuit, however, continued until this week, and the two companies have decided to bury the hatchet and go on as partners on projects that are yet to be detailed by any of them.
The Bing Image Widget could return
A press release rolled out by Getty, which you can find below, reveals that it would collaborate with Microsoft on a number of projects that could make its photos available to more people across the web.
“With our new partnership, Microsoft will use Getty Images’ latest API innovations and our award-winning visual content to take search experiences to a new level,” Getty Images Senior Vice President of Business Development Craig Peters explained.
“Our technology teams will work together to create beautiful, engaging applications and services for Microsoft users with licensed content and attribution for photographers and other content creators.”
This most likely means that the Bing Image Widget would return and would allow webmasters to once again embed Getty images in their websites with one major difference: this time everything would be legal and Getty would have nothing to complain about.
Any other specifics on the deal haven’t been disclosed, but since Getty has changed its mind completely on this on such short notice, it most likely involves financial terms that we’ll never know in detail.