un-authorized use letter

[DomainEngineer]

Hello All,

We contracted a website design via eLance.com to: an Indian company.

We clearly asked that we will only provide some written content and no images etc. The Indian company said they have royalty free images and they can use those. The web design is almost complete but the site is online for about 2 years in beta/testing statges.

We have never made any profit from the site as it is a dating site and the memberships are still free. We plan to fully launch the site when the remaining 5% or so work is completed in next few months.

We only pay eLance.com which is a US company and eLance pays the webdesign companies all over the world that bid on the projects at eLance.com

We received this letter/invoice/bill in the mail (we are in US) asking us to pay few thousand dollars (its in the high x,xxx.00 range) for the use of the "un-authorized iamages" on our website. The company that sent the letter is also in the US.

We have no clue if those few (I think 5 or 6 images: 2 images of people, and 3 photos of rings) images are un-authorized or not or what. The Indian company always told us that their images are legal and royalty free.

We have just sent the copy of the letter to the Indian company to respond to.

What are our options in this situation?

Should we respond to the bill/letter?

What else can we do?

Please HELP.

THANKS A LOT FOR YOUR RESPONSES.

[NameYourself]

If anything the company that built the site is ULTIMATELY the one at fault if you had an agreement with them where they stated all images are royalty-free if in fact they turned out to not be royalty-free. It may take you getting sued, and then having to sue them for what you were sued for? If that turns out to be the case, then you're dealing with trying to file a lawsuit in another country? Sounds like that could get quite harry and difficult.

Talk to your lawyer and get his advice cause I don't think any of us on here other than GeorgeK and JBerryHill are lawyers in the internet field and it would be best to not be led down a wrong path.

[Dale Hubbard]

Yes indeed - speak to a qualified lawyer. I have contracted in India via Elance before, and I seem to remember that Elance pass on requests for staged payments which you agree to and then get billed on your credit card. It's been a while; is this the case? I'm just wondering what stance Elance might take on this issue if it was suggested they might in some way be culpable. I'd look at the Elance contract wording, but in the meantime I would definitely remove the images. Mind you, that might be exactly the WRONG thing to do as I suppose it could be a token admission of guilt.

Lawyer time I think.

[DomainEngineer]

As you know diffrent providers bid on your project at eLance website, and you select the one that you want.

We selected this one but we do not pay them direct. We pay to eLance and elance pay the web developer after deducting their share/cut/commission whatever you call it.

We just communicate the requirements to the provider and work on the issues from day to day as the project progresses.

The Indian company has always told us that the images are either royalty free or they have bought image CDs.

Thanks for your responses again.

Regards.