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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 Food 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, representing the small restaurant, moved to dismiss or for summary judgment on the ground that the lawsuit was filed after expiration of the statute of limitations. In response, Prepared Food Photos then dismissed the lawsuit. We then moved for an award of attorney fees.