The ruling said that AFP distributed several of the pictures that Morel put on Twitter to Getty images. The ruling also said that The Washington Post, a Getty images client, published four images on its website.

Getty images too became part of this litigation but Judge did not mention any allegations of copyright infringement against it.

The Judge partially granted Morel’s summer judgment motion but also limited damages that he could potentially recover. And several other issues like the compensation Morel could get, whether AFP, Getty and The Washington Post acted willfully, as well as whether the media companies violated Morel's rights under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, were left to be decided at trial. The trial date is not yet fixed.

Twitter was not part of this litigation; however Twitter Spokesman said "As has always been our policy, Twitter users own their photos."

This case has garnered wide interest since it is the first case to address how the images that were uploaded to the social media by the people will be made available for commercial purposes. However, Facebook recently came under public cry when it said that it can sell its Instagram images without permission of the users, a step that Facebook drew back immediately.

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