AVN is saying Hustler settled for an undetermined amount in the Titan Media lawsuit. Our story which was posted yesterday states one million but why quibble about a few bucks. AVN said it was amicable. That's not what I'm hearing. But why quibble.
Porn Valley- Gay porn mega-studio Titan Media (http://www.titanmedia.com) has settled their copyright infringement lawsuit against Larry Flynt for a cool $1 million. Titan Media had sued Flynt Publications late in 2003 for copyright infringement after finding hundreds of copyrighted Titan Media images on a Flynt-owned Web site. While Titan publicly crowed about driving a tiny San Francisco Web site out of business, they have remained hush-hush about their much larger win against Flynt publications.
Back story, November 20, 2003: SAN FRANCISCO - IO Group, Inc., parent company of gay adult studio Titan Media, filed suit against Larry Flynt Publications, Inc. (LFP) for copyright infringement and common law Right of Publicity violations. The suit came after several of Titan's photographs were found on LFP-owned pay site StudClub.com, served from LFPcontent.com.
Titan said it was stunned to find 220 of its images being sold as content on LFP's StudClub.com Web site. According to IO's vice president of marketing Keith Webb, the images were being used as content in photo galleries with no associated review or commentary. More troubling, Webb said, the images in question contained Titan copyright marks (either the Titan name or the name of a particular film). Webb said LFP clearly knew the origins and the owners of the photos, but went ahead and published and sold them as content on their paid membership site anyway.
According to Titan, IO Group is asking for willful statutory damages for each of the 220 images, as well as common law Right of Publicity awards. If the court sides with the plaintiff, IO could receive up to $30 million, which would include damages of up to $150,000 per image.
"LFP knew-or should have known-that the content was not theirs to publish and re-sell," said Titan lawyer Gill Sperlien. "LFP's actions were willful infringements of Titan Media's copyright protected properties and we will seek compensation for maximum damages."
