Have you had the unfortunate experience of receiving an email from Mariel Murphy or someone else at Kushnirsky Gerber PLLC with an attached letter sent on behalf of the law firm’s clients who are often in the photography industry? These emails are commonly sent by plaintiff copyright lawyers such as Kushnirsky Gerber in an effort to cause you to make a quick payment after scaring you into thinking you will be on the hook for tens of thousands of dollars. Instead of immediately paying or simply ignoring the demand related to copyright infringement, reach out to us. We have helped numerous people in your exact situation.
Thus, if you are the recipient of a letter and potentially a draft complaint from the lawyers at Kushnirsky Gerber, then contact us about your particular issue. Kushnirsky Gerber is based in New York, where we are licensed, and we keep all communications confidential. We also pride ourselves on quick and active responses.
Kushnirsky Gerber PLLC is typically brief in the body of their emails but goes into further depth within the content of their attached copyright infringement letters. You may wish to communicate with them directly and quickly become frustrated by their responses and unwillingness to negotiate. When we get involved, they seem to much more actively communicate and come down to reality in an effort to resolve such matters without too much back and forth as well as time committed in litigation.
An example of a Kushnirsky Gerber client is professional photographer Jonpaul Nadeau and his company Aremac Photography. Kushnirsky Gerber will point out the photograph or photographs that have been used by you without first seeking his consent and provide the copyright registration number if one exists with the U.S. Copyright Office (which is necessary before a plaintiff can file suit in federal court). The law firm will also often point to the fact that the photographer embeds copyright management information within the metadata of his/her photographs (if that is the fact).
These Kushnirsky Gerber letters almost always will cite 17 U.S.C. 501 as a basis for its copyright infringement claim and indicate to you that you may not only be on the hook for actual damages but statutory damages which range from $750 to $30,000 per infringement when it is deemed an innocent, as opposed to willful, use. If Kushnirsky Gerber claims wilful use, then it may demand upwards of $150,000 per infringement, which sounds (and is) absurd in most cases.
As stated above, you do not want to completely ignore the emails and letters from Kushnirsky Gerber. The firm indicates that you should contact them by a certain date and it is wise to first contact and retain competent counsel, such as Heitner Legal, to assist with these negotiations as opposed to going at it on your own. We have been successful in either greatly negotiating down their initial demands for compensation or sometimes making these plaintiff copyright firms go away altogether depending on the circumstances. You should be cognizant that there may be applicable defenses such as fair use or de minimis use for us to explore.
We look forward to hopefully hearing from you and assisting with your specific matter.