Google Sued For Unauthorized Links To Proprietary Adult Images

Adult publisher Perfect 10 has sued Google for allegedly making available 800,000 unauthorized links to images of Perfect 10's nude models, advertising revenue and stealing membership fees. According to "The suit, filed in Los Angeles county, claims that Google committed 12 counts of intellectual property violations against Perfect 10 magazine and the web site, Last Monday, a Federal Judge Law.com: "Ruling from the bench, U.S. District Judge James Ware tossed out a copyright and trademark infringement suit brought against Visa International Service Association and MasterCard International Inc. by Perfect 10 Inc., which publishes an adult magazine and operates an adult Web site. Perfect 10 claims hundreds of Web site operators around the world are selling its trademarked images of women -- and that the credit card companies that process these transactions are liable for contributory and vicarious copyright infringement. Andrew Bridges, a partner in Winston & Strawn's San Francisco office representing MasterCard, said Perfect 10 was trying "to impose a commercial blockade on anyone accused of infringement." Ware found the credit card companies "are not obliged to manage their merchants away from infringement," Bridges added. Perfect 10's attorney, Howard King, of Los Angeles' King, Holmes, Paterno & Berliner, said his client would appeal to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. "It's an area where the copyright law has not been directly applied, but it's logical given the case law," King said, citing suits against Napster and Grokster Ltd., whose software programs allow music file-sharing over the Internet." Here's more on the Google case from the LA Times (via The article goes on to discuss previous legal rulings: "In an earlier case, Kelly vs. Arriba Soft Corp., the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in 2002 that search engines could not display full-sized images without linking back to the Web site upon which they were posted. But they could display smaller versions of the images, called thumbnails, without infringing copyrights. Google displays its results in postage-sized images, but links to Web sites that Perfect 10 says illegally display full-sized images. " The Perfect 10 print magazine has long been lauded by