A very large site and my site are both licensed to use product images created and photographed by the same vendor. Now the large site comes after my site and sends a DMCA notice to my hosting provider, asking us to take down quite some of our most popular products.
While it's absolutely a false claim and it's possible that they had no idea we were licensed just as they were, it seems I have to take down the infringing materials and send back a counter-notice and wait for 14 days?
My question is is this fair?
14 days are enough for Google to de-index the page and for it to lose all the ranking juices. Not to mention the sales losses.
What if they actually know we are licensed but just wanted to ruin our site rankings and keep coming after us in future?
Do we still have to follow the legal procedures to take down whatever products they claim infringing for 14 days? What better options do we have here?
Update
After I first posted this question, my host restored the allegedly infringing product after 14 days of my providing the counter DMCA notice. Now the same complaint is after us again on another of our popular products. This is really annoying and stupid.
How can I end this once and for all?
We are not physically in United States, can we still find someone to win the lawsuit for us? Or is there any other way to stop them?