ImageRights International, the global leader in copyright enforcement services for photo agencies and professional photographers, today announced the acquisition of Australia’s Image Witness, whose rapid scan image search technology fortifies ImageRights’ technology leadership position in the fast-growing copyright enforcement services industry.
Complementing ImageRights’ intensive image search and leading-edge image recognition technologies, Image Witness’ highly regarded image search algorithms have been specially designed for rapidly scanning very large, content rich websites for both image licensing and copyright enforcement purposes.
The combined image search systems will instantly deliver comprehensive, actionable image sighting reports to clients through their ImageRights dashboard at
imagerights.com. The sightings are first analyzed by ImageRights AI, which sorts, ranks and groups the sightings by domain owner, all of which expedites license review and facilitates claim submission by copyright owners. The ImageRights AI can then recommend if a claim should be pursued directly through ImageRights license compliance or through a partner law firm and estimate the initial demand, all in less than three seconds. Since the launch of its integrated image search and case management platform, ImageRights has processed more than 50,000 copyright infringement claims.
“I have known and followed the developments at ImageRights over the years, so when the opportunity was presented I knew ImageRights was the perfect fit,” reflected Matthew Johnson, founder and CEO of Image Witness. “ImageRights has always had an upstanding reputation in the industry and I am glad to see that our clients will be in such great hands.”
Image Witness’ clients will be seamlessly transitioned to the ImageRights service platform and will immediately have access to ImageRights’ fully automated US Copyright Office registration service. Agencies and photographers can register their images with the US Copyright Office through their ImageRights account, either from their ImageRights dashboard or by using the
ImageRights Plugin for Adobe Lightroom. ImageRights has successfully registered more 600,000 images with the USCO through the service since its launch less than two years ago.
The Image Witness acquisition also propels ImageRights into the web auditing services market. “Image Witness’ rapid scan image search can be immediately integrated into our existing platform,” said Joe G. Naylor, President and CEO of ImageRights. “We can now deliver extremely fast and accurate image use reporting, accelerating revenue recognition for agencies that previously had to rely on the self-reporting of image use by their largest media and enterprise clients.”
ImageRights, the only company to have fully automated copyright registration with the US Copyright Office, has made copyright enforcement a truly integrated component of its clients' daily workflow. Through its in-house license compliance team and global network of copyright attorneys, ImageRights has recovered more than $7 million in settlements and awards on behalf of its clients.