Our saga opens on a dark and stormy night (not really, it’s a sunny day in May, but we always wanted to say that ala that great mystery writer, Snoopy) with a letter from Corbis to the Sygma photographers. Sygma is being “liquidated”.

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Dear Corbis Contributor,

We would like to inform you that Corbis has been forced to seek liquidation of the Sygma business entity in France.

We would like to reassure you that this affects only a very small part of the Corbis business and is an isolated situation, specific to one of our French business entities.

Please note that this will not affect your representation agreements with Corbis Corporation or any other Corbis business entities outside of France.

We anticipate that the Sygma business will shortly transition into the hands of the tribunal, and they will be taking decisions over the next several weeks regarding next steps in this matter.

Corbis acquired Sygma in 1999 and inherited a number of claims. Corbis has spent tens of millions of Euros in attempting to resolve issues stemming from Sygma’s lax image library management prior to the acquisition. We invested nearly 20 million Euros on the Sygma Access and Preservation Initiative to help properly catalogue, organize and protect the collection. Unfortunately, due to ongoing legal actions and very heavy court sentences regarding claims of missing Sygma images beginning prior to Corbis’ acquisition of the archive, we have been forced to seek liquidation of the Sygma business entity.

The vast majority of the archival images in the Sygma collection will still be available at corbisimages.com because most of former Sygma contributors have signed an Archive Agreement with Corbis Corp. We will continue to have this work distributed globally by Corbis, and we also intend to maintain the Sygma Access and Preservation Facility preserving the imagery on behalf of contributors.

The sought liquidation of the Sygma business entity will in no way affect any other aspect of Corbis’ international operations.

Thank you for your continued commitment to Corbis.

If you have any questions, please contact our Contributor Relations Team at

contributorrelations@corbis.com

Best regards,
Corbis Contributor Relations

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The curtain falls for intermission before Act 2.