Usher image value

I hope this is the last post on this…. but I wanted to share part of what I emailed to a friend yesterday:

I’ve now read all the appellate briefs and, as much as it sucks, I agree with the court in its decision.

A quote from Corbis’ brief, citing the transcript of the original trial proceedings:
Usher testified that he sent this material to Corbis without making any image count, without separating blank frames from those with images, and without making any listing or inventory of what he was sending. (A-406-408 & A-1177-1178) As Usher put it: “So I jammed everything that I had as it was into a couple of big boxes and sent off a number of a lot of [film] sheets to them.” (A-287)

D’oh! This is the crucial point of the whole damages part of the case. If Usher had made a better record of what was sent, it is very likely the number of lost images, the uniqueness issue and, therefore, the valuation would have been quite different. There are several cases cited by both sides that have images being valued at MUCH higher numbers, but in all of those cases, the exact images were known. Here, they weren’t. That was key.