By Daryl Lang

A group of stock photographers has filed a class-action lawsuit against Getty Images over a subscription pricing plan.

The suit claims that by including rights-managed stock images in the Getty Images Premium Access subscription product, Getty violated copyright and broke its contract with rights-managed contributors. The suit says Getty’s product makes rights-managed images available under royalty-free license terms for unreasonably low prices.

The lawsuit is a new wrinkle in the unsteady stock photography industry, as agencies like Getty Images try out new pricing schemes to stay competitive, while photographers try to hang on to their royalty payments. Corbis, Getty’s biggest competitor, recently announced a cut in royalties to rights-managed stock photographers.

The lawsuit was filed October 27 in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York. Getty has not responded to the suit yet, but a company spokesperson says Getty Images stands behind the Premium Access product.

The plaintiffs in the suit are photographers Roger Ressmeyer and Richard Minden, who run the photo agencies Science Faction and Minden Pictures, respectively, along with 84 other photographers who contribute to those agencies. (Ressmeyer is a former president of the Picture Archive Council of America, the trade group that represents stock agencies.) Science Faction supplies rights-managed images to Getty Images, and Minden Pictures did previously, according to the suit.

The suit also calls for a class action on behalf of everyone who had a rights-managed royalty agreement with Getty in the five years leading up to when the suit was filed.

Premium Access is an unadvertised service Getty Images makes available to its high-volume clients. Prices are negotiated on a client basis. The closest comparable service advertised by a competitor is Jupiterimages Unlimited, which costs $2,499 a year for print-resolution downloads. (Getty Images recently reached a deal to acquire Jupiterimages.)

According to the suit, Getty pays photographers a pro-rata share of Premium Access fees when their images are downloaded through the program. Payments have been as low as $2.08, according to the lawsuit – substantially lower than a photographer’s share of a traditional rights-managed stock sale. “In Premium Access, Getty essentially allows its customers to set the amount of photographers’ royalties themselves,” the suit says. “Not surprisingly, this results in royalties equal to a tiny fraction of the commercial value of the photographers’ photographs.”

The lawsuit argues that Premium Access violated Getty's agreements with rights-managed photographers, which requires the agency to track image usage and to set prices “in good faith and in a commercially reasonable manner,” in the words of the lawsuit.

The suit seeks a judgment of $100 million. The case is being handled by the law firm Kreindler & Kreindler.

“Getty’s prices have severely undercut the market for comparable photographs, damaged the future market for these photographs, and violated both the Rights Managed Image Distribution agreements Getty signed and the Uniform Commercial Code,” attorney Dan Nelson said in a statement.

In its statement, Getty Images said the Premium Access product was created in response to feedback from clients who wanted simplified licensing. “We’ve refined the product with input from both customers and contributors. It’s proven to be very successful for Getty Images’ customers and contributors, and we stand behind it,” the statement says.