Prepared Food Photos v. Chicken King

In 2024, a company called Prepared Food Photos sued a small restaurant in Louisiana alleging that the restaurant posted to its website a stock photo of fried chicken in 2016 without a license. In 2016, Prepared Foods Photos, which owns thousands of photographs of food, switched from licensing photos individually through stock photo services to licensing only by subscription to the entire database for a large monthly fee. Since then, the company has sent out demand letters seeking payments of $30,000, and filed several hundred copyright infringement lawsuits against people or companies who used the photos online. In this case, Public Citizen represents the small restaurant. Our motion to dismiss or for summary judgment argues that the lawsuit was filed after expiration of the statute of limitations both because the company knew about the posting in 2019 and because, even if it had not known, it should not be allowed to invoke the discovery rule to extend the three-year statute of limitations.