Positive interim ruling: Meta must pay visual creators from June 2021
On 20 November, the Amsterdam District Court issued an interim judgment in the case between Pictoright and Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram. Pictoright started this case because it believes visual creators should receive remuneration for the use of their work on Meta’s platforms. As a platform, Meta is required to do so under European and national law, according to Pictoright.
The court confirmed the latter in its interim judgment. Meta is a platform that must make best efforts to obtain a licence from Pictoright. According to the court, this also means that Meta must pay an appropriate fee to the creators represented by Pictoright from the beginning of the implementation of this law, June 2021.
It is yet to be established how this remuneration should be determined. The court confirmed that Pictoright in any case did not necessarily have to go along with the method of ‘data discovery’ developed by Meta for this purpose. In the eyes of the judges, Pictoright had well-founded doubts about the reliability of this method. The court found that Meta must be transparent and that the approach must be appropriate and verifiable by Pictoright. Therefore, Meta must now answer a number of additional questions. After that, one or more experts will look into this, with the aim of enabling the parties to continue discussions with each other. In this way, a fair licence agreement may yet be reached. Should that still not succeed, the court can still make a decision at the end of this process.
Pictoright is positive about the court’s verdict. Although the court did not agree with Pictoright on all matters, it is a good development that the judges have ruled that Meta is bound by the statutory regime, that Meta must pay retroactively for the entire period during which the law was applicable to it, and that the judges have seen that Meta cannot simply impose its views on the method of licensing. The demanded transparency about and verifiability of Meta’s methods is an important milestone. Pictoright therefore looks forward to continuing to work with Meta and the appointed experts on a future-proof solution based on this judgement.