Getty Images

History

In 1995, Mark Getty and Chief Executive Officer Jonathan Klein co-founded Getty Investments LLC. Mark Getty is the company's chairman.

In September 1997, Getty Communications, as it was called at the time, merged with PhotoDisc, Inc. to form Getty Images.

In April 2003, Getty Images entered into a partnership with Agence France-Presse (AFP) to market each other's images.

Getty Images acquired the Michael Ochs Archives in February 2007. The Michael Ochs Archives were described by The New York Times as "the premier source of musician photography in the world".

In 2008, the private equity firm Hellman & Friedman (H&F) acquired Getty Images.

In 2009, Flickr announced a partnership with Getty Images in which specially selected users could submit photographs for stock photography usage and receive payment. In 2010, this was changed so that users could label images as suitable for stock use themselves.

In 2011, the company announced a partnership with Jason Binn, founder of Niche Media and Gilt Groupe's chief advisor, to distribute his own photography with proceeds benefitting Best Buddies International.

In 2012, H&F put Getty up for sale. As of the ensuing sale to Carlyle Group, the company was said to have an archive that included 80 million stills and illustrations.

In 2015, Jonathan Klein became the company's chairman and Dawn Airey was hired as Chief executive officer (CEO) of Getty Images.

Acquisitions

Since its formation, Getty Images has pursued an aggressive programme of acquisition, buying up many privately owned agencies that had built up the stock photography industry, from small family-run firms to larger agencies. By 1999 it had acquired one of the largest agencies, Tony Stone Images; the online art seller Art.com; the sports photography agency Allsport; the market leader in the Benelux and Scandinavia: Word View (1996, from Mr. Bert Blokhuis, 4 offices, for undisclosed sum); journalistic specialists Liaison Agency; Newsmakers the first digital news photo agency; Online USA, a specialist in celebrity shots; and the Hulton Press Library, the former archive of the British photojournalistic magazine Picture Post. The Hulton collection was sold by the BBC to Brian Deutsch in 1988, when it was renamed Hulton Deutsch. In 1996, the Hulton collection was sold on once more, this time purchased by Getty Images and renamed Hulton Getty. With the acquisition of the Hulton library, Getty Images took ownership of the rights to some 15 million photographs from the British press archives dating back to the Nineteenth Century. Hulton Getty also included photographs from the Keystone Collection, as well as images by notable photographers such as Bert Hardy, Bill Brandt, Weegee and Ernst Haas.

Getty has branched out into stock audio, music and sound effects. And also video with the acquisition of EyeWire and Energy Film Library.

In 2000, Getty acquired one of its main competitors, Archive Photos of New York (a division of The Image Bank), for US$183 million. The Archive Photos library was combined with the Hulton Getty collection to form a new subsidiary, Hulton Archive. Archive Photos had been formed in 1990 from the merger of Pictorial Parade (est. 1935) and Frederick Lewis Stock Photos (est. 1938), two well-established US photo agencies. Their collections included archive images from The New York Times, Metronome and George Eastman House, and works by photographers such as Ruth Orkin, Anacleto Rapping, Deborah Feingold, Murray Garrett, Nat Fein and John Filo.

Further acquisitions followed, with the purchase in 2004 of image.net for US$20 million. On February 9, 2006, the microstock photo website iStockphoto was acquired by Getty Images for US$50 million. In 2007, Getty successfully purchased its largest competitor, MediaVast, for $207 million. The acquisition meant that Getty Images gained control of WireImage (Entertainment, creative, and sports photography), FilmMagic (fashion and red carpet photography), Contour Photos (portrait and studio photography). Getty Images also acquired a host of other subsidiaries including "Master Delegates" who include: Isifa Image Service in Prague, Laura Ronchi in Italy.

On October 23, 2008, Getty Images announced their intention to buy Jupitermedia's online images division, Jupiterimages, for $96 million in cash. The sale went ahead in February 2009; Jupiterimages (including the sites stock.xchng and StockXpert) is now a wholly owned subsidiary of Getty, while Jupitermedia, now trading as WebMediaBrands, continues its internet publishing business which was not sold to Getty Images.

On January 25, 2016, Corbis announced that it had sold its image licensing business, including the Corbis Images, Corbis Motion and Veer libraries and their associated assets, to an affiliate of Visual China Group—Getty's exclusive distributor in China. Concurrently, it was announced that VCG would, after a transition period, license distribution and marketing of the Corbis library outside of China to Getty. The firm will also be responsible for managing Corbis's physical archives.

Corporate ownership and management

In February 2008, it was announced that Getty Images would be acquired by the private equity firm Hellman & Friedman in a transaction valued at an estimated US$2.4 billion. On July 2, 2008, Getty Images announced the completion of its acquisition. Getty Images common stock ceased trading on the New York Stock Exchange at the close of the acquisition and was delisted from the NYSE.

In 2012, H&F engaged investment bankers to sell the company. While a price of $4 billion was initially discussed, in August when the private equity firm Carlyle Group emerged as the likely acquirer, the price under consideration was said to be $3.3–3.4 billion. CVC Capital Partners Ltd. was also said to have been bidding but had yet to top Carlyle's price. The sale to Carlyle thereafter was announced at $3.3 billion, with co-founders Getty and Klein and the Getty family all carrying their investments over into the new ownership structure. Getty will also continue to serve as chairman and Klein as chief executive.

Controversial practices to enforce copyright

Beginning in 2008, Getty Images has created controversy in its manner of pursuing copyright enforcement on behalf of its photographers. Rather than pursue a policy of sending out "cease and desist" notices, Getty typically mails out a demand letter claiming substantial sums of damages to owners of websites which it believes have used their images in infringement of their photographers' copyright. Getty commonly tries to intimidate website owners by sending collection agents, even though a demand letter cannot create a debt.

One photographer noted: "courts don't like to be used as a means of extortion." In one case, Getty sent a church in Lichfield, Staffordshire, a £6,000 bill for photographs used on its website, apparently placed there by a church volunteer. In this case, the church offered to pay Getty what it thought was a reasonable amount. The diocese's communications director said:

Getty was not playing ball or following the normal litigation or dispute resolution procedures and [I advised the church] to ignore them. We don't deal with bullies; we deal with legal threats appropriately. I told [Getty] by letter that's what [the church was] doing, that we were not going to play, and didn't hear any more.

The Guardian described other instances in which Getty or other stock photo businesses dropped the matter when a website owner refused to pay or hired a lawyer. A law firm was quoted as saying: "Once we get involved generally Getty does back off."

In 2009, Oscar Michelen, a New York attorney who focuses on such damages claims, said: "The damages they're requesting aren't equal to the copyright infringement," and "there's no law that says definitively what images are worth in the digital age." He called Getty's effort to assess four-figure fines "a legalized form of extortion."

In an effort to combat online copyright infringement, in March 2014 Getty Images made over 35 million images available free for non-commercial online use via embedding with attribution and a link back to the Getty Images website. According to Getty Images executive Craig Peters, "The principle is to turn what's infringing use with good intentions, turning that into something that's valid licensed use with some benefits going back to the photographer".

Copyright infringement lawsuits

In 2009, Car-Freshener Corp. filed a lawsuit against Getty Images in U.S. Federal Court, Northern District New York (Case 7:09-cv-01252-GTS -GHL). Car-Freshener claimed that Getty Images had in its catalog photos that included the famous "tree-shaped" trademarked car fresheners. In 2011, Getty Images attempted to have the case dismissed, but its motion was denied. In 2012, Getty Images agreed to settle by paying $100,000 to Car-Freshener Corp., but admitted no wrongdoing.

In September 2013, Avril Nolan brought a $450,000 suit against Getty Images. Nolan alleged Getty Images improperly allowed her image to be used in advertisements depicting her as HIV-positive. She claimed the ad's depiction of her as HIV-positive (she is not infected by the disease) hurt her personal and professional relationships and caused her emotional distress. In March 2014 a judge ruled the lawsuit will be taken to court rather than dismissed. Getty Images settled with Nolan in January 2015.

In November 2013, Getty and Agence France-Presse were ordered to pay $1.2 million compensation to freelance photojournalist Daniel Morel for using his images posted on Twitter related to the 2010 Haiti earthquake without his permission, in violation of copyright and Twitter's terms of service.

In July 2016, Getty was sued for over $1 billion by Carol Highsmith, an American photographer notable for donating her 100,000+ images collection, royalty-free, to the Library of Congress, when Highsmith found that Getty has been selling unauthorized licenses of her work. Carol Highsmith found out about this when she received a letter from a law firm representing Getty demanding $120 for displaying her pictures on a personal website of hers.

Prestige Grant

The Getty Images Prestige Grant is awarded to two commercial photographers to realise a dream project, awarding them USD$15,000 and $7,500 respectively. The first recipients, in 2015, were Lisa Barnard and Andy Lo Po.