Copyright Infringement!! What can we do!? Please Read.

[bbott]

I was checking the statistics of our company website and I noticed a unusually high number of hits incoming from another design company's website...

Well sure enough they copied our entire site design, scripts, and even the text!!!

Their contact page even has our company's contact information and their portfolio is listing our clients!!! What the hell can we do about this? They have no contact info no their page otherwise i'd threaten them with a lawyers note.

Can I atleast report their site to somebody?? Search Engines or anyone?

BTW our site is http://www.eWebDevelopment.net

and the site copying ours is http://www.designplays.com/test.htm

Obviously it's in test production but they're stealing our original design!!

Thanks in advance for your recommendations.

Best Regards,
Brian B.
President, eWebDevelopment, LLC

[cspelts]

This happened to me twice - and both times it was another software development/web design company stealing the site. You'd think that if they're going to be selling web design services they should at least be able to design their own site!

The first time we called our lawyer and he contacted them and it was gone in less than a day. The company had paid an outside web designer to "design" the site, and all this "designer" did was make a slight change to our logo, and publish it on their server. It baffled me because they got a $40,000 site for $3000 and didn't wonder why?

The second time we decided maybe the lawyer wasn't actually necessary for first contact, so we wrote an email saying that if they didn't take the site down immediately, we'd be calling our lawyer. Once again the site was taken down right away. They never even wrote back - they just took the site down and slunk away.

And here’s a funny thing – the second time it happened the thief had left in code pulling some of the images off of our server! This was not a test site – it was live – and they were stupid enough to do that!

Also in a similar vein, I once found screen shots of sites I had designed on the personal site of a designer I worked with briefly - she was taking credit for my work. I never called her about it – maybe I should have, but it just seemed so pitiful. Then ironically she came for an interview at a company I worked for and you should have seen her face when she saw that I was working there and part of the team interviewing her! I never had to say a word, she was so flustered she bungled her interview.

[Paul B]

Every few weeks I run my sites through:
http://www.copyscape.com/ to see who's stolen text. Usually some bright spart has lifted a few paragraphs word for word. A short email informing them they and the world can see what they've done by going to copyscape.com and how they will be penalised by google ends the copying within hours.

With hot linked images, just change them for porn...

[google junky]

I have had this happen and it was resolved very quickly.


1. Use a program like examdiff and print out each copy.
Examdiff will highlight the similarities for you.
This makes the printed out copy much easier to see when they are layed side by side.

2. The lawyer sends his letter and your examdiff report to their host and them.

Looks like their host is neureal.com

In my case with the offending thieves were given 3 days to remove it completely.
Very simple and takes care of the problem.



Good luck,
Google Junky

[bbott]

I have written an email to neureal, their hosting company (assuming that's them cause those are the nams servers they're using). We'll see what happens. I'll keep everyone updated!

[ADAM Web Design]

I'm just impressed by their copyright. 2008, eh? Anyone that's been in business 3 years into the future is a company I wanna hire!

Anyway, I had something similar happen to me, and it still goes on to this day.

I had a guy who worked for me (hiring people...what a mistake THAT was!) steal large portions of my opening page, as well as my entire legal section. He had even gone so far as to steal his own web host's copy, including their company name for the web hosting section.

So I reported this to the web host. Not only did they not do anything about my problem, they didn't even care about their own. As they put it, "he's reselling for us, so he can do this however he wants." The hosting page is now gone from the site, but the bastardized version of the legal section remains.

The amazing thing is that somehow, he's gotten a PR6 from Google despite doing almost nothing to have earned it.

No big deal, though. He destroyed most of the site (much like what he did for me), and he's probably about to get busted by Google for keyword stuffing very soon. So I just decided to let it go. He's no threat anyway.

[bbott]

This is kind of funny... I emailed the guy, his hosting company, and domain registrar.

Turns out the person who registered the domain is the CEO/President of redpajama.com - company whom registered the domain.

Think that is the correct website owner? Maybe this company doesn't trasnfer ownership when you register a domain and all whois info is set to this guy.

[bbott]

Here is the reply I received from their hosting company. Since all their emails came back undeliverable looks like their account is going bye bye!

======== CUT HERE =========
Your support request was answered:

Created: Nov 13, 2005 11:15:39 AM
Last Mod: Nov 13, 2005 5:07:21 PM

Assigned To:
Support(Neureal Support)


[Nov 13, 2005 5:09:00 PM]
A: Brian,

Please let us know if this issue is not taken care of by designplays.com site owner within the alloted time period and we will remove their account.

Thank you
-------------------------------------------------------

Justice is served! :)

[frontman]

Thanks for the great info and the link! I ran our site through it and found a company in IL that has copied our site almost word for word!! Infact, they even went so far as to use my "..." after a sentence...kind of a trade mark of mine. This really really makes me mad for one main reason...we spent so much time on writing the content that I am really mad. Will their hosting company do anything? I ran it through whois and it shows that Yahoo is hosting... any ideas? Or is calling our attorney the best way to go? I just hate paying attorney fees...

Thank you again for bringing this up!!

[google junky]

Originally Posted by frontman

Thanks for the great info and the link! I ran our site through it and found a company in IL that has copied our site almost word for word!! Infact, they even went so far as to use my "..." after a sentence...kind of a trade mark of mine. This really really makes me mad for one main reason...we spent so much time on writing the content that I am really mad. Will their hosting company do anything? I ran it through whois and it shows that Yahoo is hosting... any ideas? Or is calling our attorney the best way to go? I just hate paying attorney fees...

Thank you again for bringing this up!!

If it were a run-of-the-mill small town hosting company then you could always run into someone who doesn't care and have to take bigger steps to make them pay attention that you are serious. As in getting a lawyer.

If you are indeed dealing with Yahoo then you would most likely get a real response to your situation.
read this
http://docs.yahoo.com/info/copyright/copyright.html

[frontman]

thanks google junky! I am going to speak with our corporate attorney this morning. I am serious concerned...recently we found out that it is going to be impossible to ever get into DMOZ due to an accident on our novice web experience and a moderator on this board that I upset over questioning DMOZ so this is just another issue that I guess we have to tackle and maybe get a break on. The last thing we can risk is google thinking this is duplicate info and punishing us! Thanks for the help..I will let everyone knows what happens...

[dharrison]

Oh my God.

I just checked on that site that Paul suggested and found a site in Mersea copying my text. I sent him a snotty email telling him to come with his own text or to feel my wrath. I will let you know whay happens.

Thanx Paul. I would never have known that without your help.

ATB

[frontman]

Our attorney's have mailed the documents to Cease to the hosting company, webmaster, company owner...we will see....this really makes me upset.

[cspelts]

Originally Posted by frontman

recently we found out that it is going to be impossible to ever get into DMOZ due to an accident on our novice web experience and a moderator on this board that I upset over questioning DMOZ

frontman, I think you're worrying needlessly about the DMOZ. Upsetting a Mod on this board will not affect your submission - it just doesn't work that way! You made multiple submissions, but you know better now - and it's not a fatal mistake. It may take some time, but if the editor who processes your submission feels your site adds value to the directory, you'll get in.

[Psychobel]

Originally Posted by cspelts

frontman, I think you're worrying needlessly about the DMOZ. Upsetting a Mod on this board will not affect your submission - it just doesn't work that way! You made multiple submissions, but you know better now - and it's not a fatal mistake. It may take some time, but if the editor who processes your submission feels your site adds value to the directory, you'll get in.

If only that were true. We made completely proper and polite submissions to DMOZ some 2 years ago. We followed up properly and actually got a response saying it would be attended to in good time. It wasn't. We politely volunteered to edit the category and some other for good measure, we were rejected. We got someone else we knew from an appropriate background to apply to edit, he was rejected. We also know that a competitor of ours, who employs the occasional black hat technique, has managed to get to edit a related section. It's all a waste of time.
DMOZ is at best incompetant and at worst corrupt.

[frontman]

Well..few things here...first:

Our cease and desist letter from our attorney's worked..sure it cost us $900 but they shut down the site, apologized and told us about the person they paid to make their site....we are dropping it at this point.

As for the additional talk about DMOZ...well...I would like to say that I hope this will not hurt getting into it but again, there is a person on this board that I believe has now made it their life desire to make sure we will never be listed. I have written that site off and will continue to work on content, links and quality....who cares about DMOZ...it wont be much longer and everything will be about the big G and people will say...dmoz who?

[google junky]

Originally Posted by frontman

Our cease and desist letter from our attorney's worked..sure it cost us $900 but they shut down the site, apologized and told us about the person they paid to make their site....we are dropping it at this point.

I'm glad to hear it worked out for you.
Good luck in all you do.

Google Junky