What do you do when a competing website copy's your text and uses it as promotional content on their site? We are revenue generating sites and competition is in the air.

Wanting to know the professional thing to do?

Slim

First thing I would do is contact my attorney and ask him to send them a "cease and decist" order asking them to remove the content.

You can prove your case (if need be) by referring to archive.org and their "Wayback Machine" which will establish who had the content first.

Generally a letter from an attorney threatening a lawsuit will get results. Even if the offender felt they could win their case, most often they don't have the funds to fight it.

__________________
MAWells
www.web-kare.com

How do you handle the situation is the person who owns the site lives outside the United States?

__________________
Sincerely,

Karen Hudgins
Marketing Manager
ABCLeads.com
khudgins@abcleads.com
800-860-4996 ext 11
www.abcleads.com
www.affiliate-program-marketing-center.com

The same way... most companies are members of Berne Convention and the Universal Copyright Convention (UCC).

You can find more about what to do at:

http://www.whatiscopyright.org/

which is a brilliant resource for any copyright questions you might have.

Getting your work/domain copyrighted or trademarked helps resolve any dispute immediately. Also, add a copyright META tag for copyrighted pages as well. It only costs 30.00 to copyright information through the US Patent & Trademark office, but the prices are very expensive for Trademarks (logo, name) and Patents, and in some cases, you may have to trademark/patent items individually. Depending upon the content or product, the costs are worth it. There may also be information available for global copyright protection.

Now assuming you didn't take the proper steps, but you have dated proof of conception, witnesses, and other credible credentials, the first thing to do is contact the low-life, oops I mean person who copyrighted your material. If that doesn't help, then depending upon the seriousness, contact the host which is allowing the copyrighted material to be displayed. Most web host providers don't know the legality of domain content, but if advised, they will take steps to have the content removed. There are rules regarding hosting copyrighted material with most all web host providers.

But if you didn't take the proper steps above, then it's almost your word against another's. And also that person who copied your work could have also copyrighted your own material and then may now have a legal right to it. But then again, I'm no lawyer, so they may not. I've actually seen companies rip off complete products, including part of a product name, and then get the rip-off copyrighted and trademarked. Scary.

People are strange, you'd think someone would ask for permission with a link back to the origin, or at least reference the author for which the material came from. But people also assume you'd never find out, as if search engines suddenly disappear! In some really strange cases, people are now using complete references to existing domains within new domains to generate traffic to their site, or drive traffic from another one.

*Sigh*

1. File a DMCA complaint.

2. Report to Google (and other search engines)

3. Contacting their host with proof of original copy(time stamp) - will often get their attention to disabling the FTP account.

4. Contacting the domain registra with the same approach and disenabling the DNS has merit as well.

Note: unless you are willing to play hardball and risk the expense of going to court (regardless of whether you are in the right) avoid direct contact with the competitor.

If you decide it is in your best interest to "play hardball" seek legal advice - WebProWorld members are not experts in this area - and you should only based ethical or legal actions on qualified professionals... it great for us to say "do this" -- we have nothing to lose > you do and more than just text copy.

__________________
New daily advice on Advance SEO, Copyright & DMCA @ Twitter

Hi,

My question is how do you even findif your stuff has been stolen?

Once I was looking at eBook directories and found a pirated copy of my own eBook. I copied the thief's host provider demanding they immediately remove my eBook from their site. It seemed to work pretty quick, even though the thief was on the other side of the world from me.

-Tony
_______________________
www.lightning-mortgage.com

I feel your pain! We have an affiliate site too and there is a competitors site that consistantly copies and uses deals that we find on his pages, and passes them off as his own. I realize tis the nature of the business, but it is so irritating to find an awesome deal and post it only to have someone claim it as their own. Bad thing too is he is a more established site, so technically we are making him loads of money! He has even admitted he takes the deals and watches for us to update, to make less work for him! As he changes the wording there really is no recourse for us, is there? Does anyone know?

Recently our index page was hi-jacked. They copied the code. Completely, right down to the graphics! Removed the graphic for the live help feature, but failed to remove all the code. So everytime someone visited their site we were alerted that someone was in our site!

After a day or three of this noise we sent them a polite but firm cease and desist notice, and they did. Site was gone within 24 hours. Which was great since lawyers savvy regarding the internet are not easy to find in rural Idaho.

I am sure that they are still wondering how we caught up to them so quickly.

__________________
Laura Booth
Clearwater Web Solutions
www.clearwaterwebsolutions.com
Website Development Services

We already fended off 3 criminal webmasters, but failed with the last one called Forrest Geiger from California but living in Costa Rica. He stole 5500 pages of content abusing our confidence and friendship (he even was our best man) by secretly putting his name as the administrative contact when changing and registering a new the domain name. in august 2003 took over the whole business. Locally we filed a criminal law suit, the OIJ (FBI) went into his house and confiscated his computer equipment and started rebuilding the site from scratch. We contacted all mayor search engines, but any page which was identical to the stolen one he managed to get our page banned calling it a copy. So the new site had to be visually similar but completely different in content. In the meantime our rebuilt site has over 16'000 pages: www.1-costaricalink.com. Unfortunately the stolen site is still there, competing with our rebuilt site and completely confusing our customers. In some of our main searches the stolen site is still better positioned because it has more links and is older. Some search engines answered our requests but the most important ones like Google don't even read the letters. Our main concern at the moment is how to regain 3 positions of our main searches with the rebuilt site:
"Costa Hotels", "Costa Rica Rent a Car" and "Costa Rica Tours" where the stolen site: www.1costaricalink.com is maintaining the good position it always had and we with the new site appear for a few days and immediatly disappear again it beeing completely different pages. In almost all other searches we managed to be again on top of the result lists. We appreciate any suggestions and help.

Have a happy day
Jörn Malek
FlamingoLink, S.A
Costa Rica

__________________
I am Swiss, born in Vienna, Austria, in 1943 and came first to Costa Rica in 1967.It is the web sites about Costa Rica, where I can apply all the accumulated knowledge I have in advertising, design, photography marketing, three languages and nature.

'lo world. In a respectful place, you have the individual property copyright on all of the texts that you have created, but if you really consider your literal content as being of great potential, you might want to officially copyright them for a small fee of $30.00USD at http://www.copyright.gov/register/ and obtain an official copyright certificate.

For that small amount of money, you can rest asured you'll never get copyright infringements from other people/companies.

__________________
Made in Europe.

we're about 5 day's into the issue and have not made any contact but were close to determiining our recourse. I've noticed that Yahoo had cached our page about a month b4 he loaded his page and I hope that this will be suffiecent.

I have also heard the rule of 10%. Changes must amount to 10% of the original content to not infrindge......?

I have 11 moderators that work on our boards who are all aware of the situation and have also contacted a few publishers in our industry asking what to do and making them aware of his activities. Will keep ya'll posted.

Thanks for all the reply's

As to finding sites that plagiarize yours, find a piece of text on your site (or create one) that is likely to be unique and that would likely be copied by someone stealing the content.

Do periodic checks for that string on Google and other search engines. You can also employ automatic services for that, like http://www.google.com/webalerts
or there are commercial services that will watch for violations with bots (which I routinely block from my site as needless bandwidth wasters).

I have many of these commercial services linked here:
http://www.andilinks.com/ctm.htm#26060


Andi

__________________
...the Rockies may tumble, Gibralter may crumble... G & I Gershwin, 1937

I like to post my "Copyright" in plain and simple language:

http://www.richkoi.com/copyright.htm

I have had people steal photos from my site and use them on their eBay auctions or even their own website! I just send a polite message stating that they are my photos, please remove them. So far, everyone has complied with my requests. If they don't...eBay will hear about it. As for the websites, I am not sure who to report them to.

Rich

__________________
Me

Caution in this approach. Gorilla tactics do work - I will not argue against that -- they can backfire to.

You can assume that many believe no crime has been committed... but there are those that are also prepared to "see you in court", and in court it matters not who is right - but who proves their case better... often this is the one with deeper pockets... therefore not only did you lose the copy:

1. you lose time by being in court

2. you lose money for the lawyer (that you didn't really want), and

3. If you happen to lose... you get the pay court costs, plus the potential of damages.

If you are only "pretending" to play hardplay the risk is real, so be very cautious and ensure you know the pitcher can't throw a curve ball.

__________________
New daily advice on Advance SEO, Copyright & DMCA @ Twitter

You may also want to contact the company hosting the stolen material. We have policies that permit us to take down any sites that are involved in illegal activities, as do most hosting companies. If I were you, I would send them a cease and desist order or a request for the site to be taken down. Most hosting companies will oblige, especially if there will be no monetary loss on their part... However, he could move the site to another host just as quick as he stole the content.

If your credit card or check was used to pay for the domain name, then you could simply contact the registrar and fill out a couple of forms to regain ownership and control of the domain.

I believe the 1costaricalink.com website is hosted by Speedfox, Inc at http://www.speedfox.com. They own the IP address that the site resolves to...

__________________
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Website Design Software and Website Builder

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We've had it happen several times. In almost every case an email to the site owner, with a carbon to their host has brought an apology and removal of the content immediately.

In one case, they tried to argue (our site states copyright from 1996 on) that they were first, and that it wasn't a copy. When my lawyer wrote them, they took the site offline.

Rich I loved it, mate! :D

The only problem with our guy is he doesnt care. Thinks because "everyone else does it" its ok, especially since the wording is changed. And it isnt just our site, but several others too that he copies. But I guess what it comes down to with us is can you copyright a deal?

By sheer dumb luck, I discovered that a competitor had plagiarized images and text from my company's site. Within seconds of the discovery I was at my computer, my fingers melting the keyboard as I typed out a passionate cease and desist letter.

Before hitting send I did some research and discovered some interesting things. As such I have held off sending the email and might have my attorney do it instead...this is why:

Even if you have not copyrighted the material via the legal route (filing forms and paying fees), intellectual property is copyrighted to a degree once it goes online. It is especially helpful if a copyright notice (Copyright "c" Date Author) is displayed on all pages. You must also be sure you have evidence of your ownership and the date of creation. Many of the previous posts pointed out good steps to take. In our case, we not only have proof that our site was online four years before the plagiarizers', we also have evidence that the material in question was created at least one year before their site was ever online.

Although the material is copyrighted, again to a degree, by the original author, said author cannot really pursue legal action. However...and this is where it gets good...

You can copyright your material (in writing through the copyright office) within three months of discovering the infringement and then pursue litigation.

Additionally, if your case is won in a civil court, you may be able to collect a tidy sum. It doesn't take any stretch of the imagination to assume that someone lazy and unimaginative enough to steal another person's material would use the same material in print format (in brochures for example). If this happens to be the case, once ten or more brochures have been sent out for purposes of financial gain (which can be as simple as sending out sales literature) then the owner of the copyrighted material can collect $2,500.00 per instance of infringement...i.e., $25,000.00.

We are in the process of obtaining legal counsel to protect our rights and intellectual property and, if possible, collect damages. The reason for our thirst for vengeance is that they defamed our products as a whole while using our own text and images to that end! Furthermore, I put in countless hours taking photos, optimizing images, creating text and authoring our site (all the while learning as I went along) and for someone to come along, hit "copy" and "paste" and claim ownership makes me break out in hives!!!

Much good advice has been given, advice I need not repeat here.

My lawyer -- whose firm specializes in Intellectual Property Rights cases here in Thailand -- advised me to take a couple of steps I didn't notice being mentioned here, at least not explicitly. One is to *frequently* back up your entire site (CD, DVD, tape. whatever you prefer). Another is to write out a statement of copyright, date it, then sign it in front of a notary public (or at least 2 witnesses who also date and sign it), then mail it to yourself by registered mail in the snail mail system -- then don't open it. In my case, I sent originals not only to myself but also to my attorney (at his firm's address) that I had had notarized, with 2 witnesses signing in the notary's presence -- and I paid for 2 notarized copies, so both I and my attorney have original copies, both sealed. This is not practical on a frequent basis, but it does establish date of conception pretty much beyond any reasonable doubt (says my attorney -- I'm not trained in law).

Though not really a solution, another step *may* help deter content thieves: offer something for free, no strings attached. If it's good stuff, it may sate them and cause them to at least hesitate before stealing something else.

One last point: the Boerne Convention was mentioned earlier in this thread. As I understand it from my local counseler, if a country is a signatory of that convention and the offender is located within its borders, then anyone, including people located in other signatory nations, can pursue legal remedy. An expensive proposition, to be sure, but at least its available. And if the Big Boys move vigorously, there may be hope in countries such as Thailand, where despite local laws and the country's signatory status of Boerne, piracy in every area is extremely widespread. A major popular American restaurant chain discovered some jerk had opened an identical store here and thumbed his nose at their requests he cease and desist. Now he's in deep trouble, as the management of that chain pulled out all the stops, essentially giving their legal department carte blanche to nail the guy. Anecdotes have surfaced saying other offenders copying other Western companies have changed gears in a hurry.

If all else fails, then I guess all any of us can do is sigh, then try to take solace from the old saying that "imitation is the highest form of flattery." [Still irks thunderation out of me, though.]

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http://BangkokAtoZ.com, Bangkok's Voice On The Web

Well, I have read through most of the posts and I think some are a bit too simplistic. For instance, simply using archive.org (waybackmachine), really proves nothing. They don't cache every page on the internet. Another thing comes to mind when someone claims to be "first": So were the Indians and who knows who was there before them.

My point being, that you better have something really unique to expect to win a copyright fight. Even if you do win, it will likely cost you more than it's worth. Good luck in collecting damages, too, if you can prove what they are. That's a big "if".

While attempting to copyright something, what will be your reaction, if you discover that you inadvertantly used someone else's copyrighted work?

There have always been and always will be thieves. Like designer drugs, they may have the same effect as the "brand name", but one minor twist in the chemical configuration and you no longer have a case.

You will have better luck fighting a trademark infringement or patent violation, as these are thoroughly researched and documented for registration.

With all of that being said, if you still think it's worth it, I suggest gaining as much information on your rival as possible, BEFORE initiating any action. Many a time the tables have been turned and you could become the one not only being the victim, but now a defendant.

This topic arises in one form or another and the victim usually loses in the end because of their obsession. Recommended reading: Moby Dick.

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DrTandem's San Diego Web Page Design, drtandem.com

Dr. Tandem makes an excellent point about the risk of oversimplification, and another one about the difficulty of getting anywhere with pursuing a violation even if we do have iron-clad proof. I know a few years ago my then-partner in my site and I discovered a now-defunct local magazine had plagerized an entire article verbatim as well as the accompanying photograph. And yes, we had a copyright notice on the page.

We talked it over with my lawyer, and he pointed out that while we had a clear-cut case, getting any money would be difficult, even if the offender had tons of money, because the site is entirely non-commercial -- so how could we have been "financially damaged"? A sobering point. We did pay a *friendly* visit to the editor -- heck, we would have loved for him to use one or more items a month. But it turned out the magazine was one title in a group of 5 or 6 related ones, and the owner was bleeding money; a couple months after our visit, that particular title went out of business, as all the others were soon to do.

On the plus side, the editor was quite interested; he was desperately short of staff and told us he would be delighted to use as much stuff as we wanted to give him, and would sign any reasonable agreement (one-time publication rights with us retaining copyright, etc.). But the owner had already essentially decided to throw in the towel.

But it shows that had the magazine been financially viable, we could have gained some valuable local advertising for no money, only some time. Of course, that wouldn't work with, say "TIME" or "Newsweek" -- but they wouldn't deliberately plagerize in the first place. And I would assume in the presumably rare instance of a small, local publication lifting material, the bosses of it may very well be willing to work out a mutual-back-scratching deal -- a win-win for both sides.

By the way, Dr. Tandem, I broke into a smile when I read your recommended reading -- that's incisive. :-)

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http://BangkokAtoZ.com, Bangkok's Voice On The Web

If the page that's been copied is old, and the site it's been copied to is new, then this MIGHT help:

Use Sam Spade and enter the address of both sites (one at a time), then click on web.

Depending on the configuration of the server, it might spit out a last modified date. If you haven't touched the page in a long time, that's proof right there it's been there for a while.

The last modified date would be helpful as part of your evidence, but if it is all that you have it is too thin because even that, can be faked.

Providing a complex and detailed trail of evidence would be the best. Begin a blog, it doesn't have to be all that creative or interesting but document stages in the development of your website keeping snapshots of the various stages.

This won't work if you didn't develop the site online, but if that's what you are doing now it is the best way to prove the step by step progression of what you have and it would be very difficult for a plagerizer to fake.

Oh BTW, the rather bland documentary blog on my site begins July 7, 2002... The real-time stats collection provided by my web host will show that those pages existed on my site when they are dated as well as the wayback machine's copy. I also keep copies of the raw activity logs for the period. I CAN prove it's my work.

This posting is the first time I've actually thought through this whole process of evidence creation and presentation, and I am pleased with it. :)

Andi

__________________
...the Rockies may tumble, Gibralter may crumble... G & I Gershwin, 1937

Come to think of it, a newsletter will also serve this purpose. It would be very hard to fake the dates on a Yahoo groups newsletter, talking about new stuff on the site, for instance. As long as you keep the archive intact, it could serve as evidence.

I see I forgot to respond to another point Dr. Tandem's excellent post raised: what do we do when we discover we ourselves have accidentally used someone else's material.

There are, of course, major legal differences between being the person who created something but didn't formally obtain a copyright and being such a person who did get a copyright (or trademark or patent). That said, IMHO, on the moral level, the situation is the same.

I once reprinted a joke in my e-column I received from a reader unknown to me who claimed authorship of the joke, even asking me to credit him with it and indicate he held the copyright, which I did. Soon thereafter the *real* author sent me a polite request to change the copyright notice to him or, if I preferred, to remove the joke from that particular issue; he also provided overwhelming proof of his ownership.

I immediately took the joke down (an informed the real author), then wrote the original contributor, including the e-mail from the second gentleman. That original contributor wrote me back a sheepish confession of his own theft, adding he had written an apology to the true author.

I then wrote the real author again, saying if he was amenable to my posting it back, I would, but also that I would understand if he preferred just leaving matters as they were. I got a very kind reply, one saying he fully understood I was entirely innocent of any intentional wrong-doing, and how much he appreciated my reaction to the whole affair -- and granting me unlimited (in terms of time) right to have the joke on my site for as long as he held the copyright.

In short -- I fix it. As I assume most people do.

__________________
http://BangkokAtoZ.com, Bangkok's Voice On The Web

Dear WebProWorld Contributors,



My name is Forrest Geiger and my ex-business partner, Joern Malek, is making false and slanderous statements about me and our relationship in this public forum. He did this about 9 months ago on WebProWorld. I alerted the moderator, and his comments were edited as violating forum rules. Now, he is doing it again, and although I have complained twice in writing, the comments have not yet been removed.



It do not think it is appropriate to make a professional forum a venue for business problems, and so I have never corrected his earlier comments after the salnder was removed. However, I absolutely need to correct the slander now being heaped upon me, especially when other contributors have started referring to me as a “thief” and my site as being “stolen.” This is not something any of you would want to happen to you.



Allow me to include, in part, the email that I have sent twice to garrett@webproworld.com:



“My name is Forrest Geiger, and I am the owner / webmaster of www.1costaricalink.com which is mentioned in these two posts on these two pages:

http://www.webproworld.com/viewtopic...ghlight=#95310



http://www.webproworld.com/viewtopic...ghlight=#10183



The truth is that Mr. Malek and I were equal business PARTNERS, and I stole nothing. After working together for awhile on www.1costaricalink.com, it was not enough that we appeared once or twice in the top 10 of Google for competitive keywords, - optimization was my specialty - he wanted to be there 8 or 10 times by building clone and near copy sites. I absolutely refused. He began building them anyway with our partnership money. In the dissolution of our partnership, I retained 1 site, and he retained about 13, including 2 major portals.”



The site I retained was www.1costaricalink.com .



He basically retained these sites, plus many other domain names:

1 Link 2 Costa Rica ( Country Portal 5000 plus pages)
1 Link 2 Hotels ( Hotel Portal 3000 plus pages)
1 Link 2 Yellowpages ( Index )

Province of Alajuela Mini Portal
Province of Cartago Mini Portal
Province of Guanacaste Mini Portal
Province of Heredia Mini Portal
Province of Limón Mini Portal
Province of Puntarenas Mini Portal
Province of San José Mini Portal







As proof to my contribution to the total site, and as proof of our equal partnership relationship, go here:

http://www.1costaricalink.com/eng/web/equalpartner.htm The frivilous and inconvenient charges he has filed against me will be dropped with this and other evidence.



Additionally, the present name he is using, www.1-costaricalink.com was NEVER a name previously owned by him. I was the original owner, and merely bought it to keep someone from buying a similar name to www.1costaricalink.com. I gave it to him during buyout negotiations that eventually failed. After the partnership dissolution, he then used my original logo design and began building yet another clone / near duplicate site - www.1-costaricalink.com! (Also, the dash – in the logo was put there by me during the original design so that the name would wrap more around the parrot. It had nothing to do with any domain name we were promoting at the time. Recently, I took out the – and mad the “1” red in my logo to eliminate some of the confusion his new site is causing with the public.)



When Joern and I split, his three major portals above were climbing in the search engine ratings, and he showed up 13 times out of 20 in Google results for “costa rica spa,” with all his various "portals", an accomplishment of which he was very proud. He also had nearly killed www.1costaricalink.com in the search engines with his bad optimization and linking techniques during buyout negotiations, when I had no control. I warned him again and again of the probable consequences of his near clone major portals and mini-portal doorway sites. He refused to listen.



So, to answer his form question: “What’s wrong with Google, or is it me?” , it really is you, Joern, not Google. In fact, Google has tried o help Joern in another post: http://www.webproworld.com/viewtopic...hlight=#102996

Ignoring Google’s warning about his keyword stuffing, the following day he increased his keywords at the top of his home page from two long lines to 6 lines!! Google had no more success in reasoning with him than I did. Another poster had it right when he said that optimization was an ongoing process to Joern’s complaint that my site was older, more seasoned, and had better links, etc.. Joern doesn’t have a clue as to how many hours I have spent to correct what was wrong, and then to carefully tune in www.1costaricalink.com until it is now #1 from many keywords. Those are my ongoing efforts, as well as new material.



Unfortunately for Joern, he is a textbook example of what can happen when you violate search engine guidelines, and now, he's complaining. I predict that as Yahoo begins to fold in stronger duplication filters, he will be in trouble there, too, more than he presently is.



There is so much more that I am tempted to say in anticipation of Joern’s next volley of fraudulant statements, but once again, I think it is tacky to deface a professional forum with ongoing bickering. It would be better if the moderator deleted all of this, or at least edited out the names and slander.



Sincerely,



Forrest Geiger

This certainly should give anyone pause, who might be contemplating a business partnership...

Probably the best advice is, don't.

But if you do, first read a lot of things like Forrest Geiger's story above.

Andi

__________________
...the Rockies may tumble, Gibralter may crumble... G & I Gershwin, 1937