Photo of Pork Chop at the Center of Lawsuit Between Grocery Store and Image Library

This is not the photo of the raw pork chop that was at the center of the lawsuit.

A stock food photography company that sued a small grocery store for using an image of raw pork chops on Facebook won its case in court but was awarded just $200 in damages.

According to a report by Copyright Lately, Prepared Food Photos, Inc. (PFP) is a stock food image archive with a library of about 18,000 photographs. The company has filed hundreds of copyright infringement lawsuits against small businesses, seeking damages based on a claimed subscription fee of $999 per month. PFP holds valid copyrights and is entitled to enforce them when its images are used without permission.

However, Copyright Lately reports that evidence disclosed during recent litigation revealed that around 95% of PFP’s revenue comes from enforcement actions rather than licensing. Furthermore, the company has not produced new photographs in recent years. The report says that most of PFP’s work involves searching online for potential infringements of its existing images.

According to Public Citizen, documents obtained in the case showed that PFP earned about $50,000 annually from subscriptions, much of it tied to settlements of past infringement claims. By comparison, it generated nearly $2 million per year from infringement settlements.

The recent lawsuit, reported by Copyright Lately, centers on a September 28, 2020 incident, when a floor manager at a small, family-owned grocery store in Milwaukee searched online for “fresh pork chops,” saved an image to his phone, and posted it on the store’s Facebook page to promote a one-week sale to roughly 1,000 followers.

PFP, which owns the copyright to a photo of raw pork chops, sued Sharif Jaber, owner of NOFAL, LLC, the company that operated the store. According to court documents, the image of the pork chop remained on the store’s Facebook page from September 2020 through at least November 2021. PFP argued that under its subscription model, this would require two annual subscriptions and asked the jury to award the company $23,976 in damages from Jaber.

However, the jury instead only awarded $200 in actual damages and $1,000 in statutory damages. PFP chose to accept the $200 and sought a new trial or a revised judgment, but the court still upheld the original verdict. PFP supported its request for a revised judgment by citing several prior cases, arguing that courts regularly accept its $999-per-month subscription-based damages model. But the court rejected this argument and noted that comparable licenses for single photographs from companies such as Getty and Shutterstock can cost well under $200, making the jury’s award consistent with market value and far below the amount PFP had requested.

Following this, PFP then sought $69,255 in attorney’s fees from Jaber. Still, the court denied the request, finding there was no clear prevailing party. (Copyright Lately notes that while PFP succeeded on its infringement claim, it did not prevail on a separate vicarious liability claim against the store owner. Under Seventh Circuit law, courts may decline to award legal fees when a verdict produces mixed outcomes.)

According to Copyright Lately, this lawsuit’s outcome appears to be part of a broader pattern affecting PFP’s business model. In 2024, the company filed a similar lawsuit against Pool World, a Spokane-based business that sells swimming pools and hot tubs, over a vegetable kebab photo used on its website. That case was later dismissed after discovery showed PFP had offered subscriptions for as little as $29.99 per month, that its predecessor licensed the same images through iStock for minimal fees, and that many of its “subscribers” were businesses that had signed agreements to settle infringement claims rather than to access its image library.

Image credits: Header photo licensed via Depositphotos.