Microsoft Accused Of 'Massive Copyright' Breach

Microsoft (NasdaqGS: MSFT - news) has pulled a new tool from its Bing service after being accused of "massive infringement" of copyrighted photographs.

The Bing Image Widget let bloggers and other online publishers to embed collages and slideshows onto their websites based on search results.

But on Thursday Getty Images filed a lawsuit in New York alleging that the "beautiful, configurable image galleries and slideshows" contained copyrighted images.

It demanded that the widget be removed and asked for unspecified damages.

By Monday, Microsoft had an announcement on its Bing website saying the feature – which was still in beta testing – had been "temporarily removed".

The company said: "As a copyright owner ourselves we think the laws in this area are important.

"We'll take a close look at Getty's concerns."

The tool was launched late last month and markets to website publishers as a way to enhance how their sites look.

Legal papers filed by Getty said: "Rather than draw from a licensed collection of images, defendant gathers these images by crawling as much of the Internet as it can, copying and indexing every image it finds, without regard to the copyright status of the images and without permission from copyright owners like plaintiff."