Site being copied

[chrisJumbo]

Wasn't sure where to put this.

A site appears to be copying parts of our site. I'm inclined to let them potentially die a slow death but, they are trying to attract people via Adwords. There ad was visible from our site, I have since blocked their Ads. They are potentially operating in a fraudulent manner, so I may report them elsewhere as well. But, should I seek to have the site taken down. The wording is not an exact copy, but quite close.

Here is their site jumbocdfund[dot]com. Our is in the signature.

What do you think?

Their intro:

Serving Institutional and Private Clients Since 1999

Welcome to our Jumbo CD Fund, a Stargroove Corp.
Best CD Rates Nationwide (USA) and Internationally.
Stargroove Ltd., is a International Hedge Fund, located in NYC , London UK, and Prague, Czech Republic. The Fund currently is focused on large negotiated blocks of Certificates of Deposit (CDs) our management and consulting team specializes in helping our clients find the best CD rates available, both nationally and internationally...

We have been serving institutional and individual investors since 1999. Our clients invest in Jumbo CDs valued between $100,000 – $1,250,000. The most popular terms offered are from 12 months to 10 years.

Our intro:

Welcome to Jumbo CD Investments, Inc.

Best CD Rates Nationwide (USA)

Jumbo CD Investments, Inc. is a Certificate of Deposit (CD) management and consulting firm specializing in helping our clients find the best CD rates available nationally. We search the U.S. looking for banks and credit unions that make their CDs available to nationwide investors, and we only work with FDIC-insured banks and NCUA-insured credit unions.

We have been serving institutional and individual investors since 1991. Most of our clients invest in Jumbo CDs valued between $90,000 – $250,000. The most popular terms offered are from 90 days to 5 years.

The rates page also has similarities that seem beyond coincidental.

Thank you,
cd :O)

[chrisJumbo]

At this point, I don't think Copyscape will be helpful. The deed has been done. I guess the free version could tell me if it is potentially copied.

Thank you,
cd :O)

[chrisJumbo]

So I did run it through copyscape and their page came up as a copy. So, do I work on reporting them or just letting them die a slow death. I'm inclined to at least report them in Adwords because they did show up as an ad on our site.

[claybutler]

The problem with your situation is that although it's clear they are copying you, their content is not a copy. It's probably changed enough to avoid copyright law infringement. So filing a DMCA violation with Google or anyone may not help. However, your field is heavily regulated so you may be able to shut them down though other means by a simple report to the SEC or whatever organization oversees these things.

It's hard to believe that a copycat business has all the credentials to legally offer the services they are promising.

One question I do have is the use of the word "Jumbo". Is that a common industry term or something you came up with?

Another question is how many content matches are there? Google will take action against plagiarism or fraudulent activity. I've had them take down information from Blogger sites and delete entire websites from their index for violations.

[snakeman]

Thanks for the post chrisjumbo. My industry is reptile shows and wildlife education and bootlegging of content is almost industry standard.
New players see nothing wrong with cutting and pasting the sales pitch from sites of existing players, complete with testimonials (falsified to get the dates and age).
IN about 2007, a new player copied my web site, used identical words and claims (notably as to how good they were), complete with testimonials spanning back 15 years. I complained to the government regulator about them, because they had been in business for only a week or so and yet had these 15 YO testimonials that were obviously faked. These of course were the basis to support the false claims in the rest of the site.
The government regulator here in Australia wrote back and said that lying and falsifying claims was routine in Australia and not worthy of their intervention and so the company and site continue to operate without impediment, false claims and all, to this very day!
I am telling you this as I wouldn't get my hopes too high in terms of dealing with the bootlegger.
Elsewhere on this forum, I've mentioned trademarks and yes, if you have a good idea thatis trademarkable or patentable, I say do it.
If you own one and someone else bootlegs it, then YOU have the right to take legal action against them. This has been our business strategy since about 2007, knowing that the government in Australia has no desire to force businesses to operate ethically.
I assume it is similar in other countries.
All the best
Snakeman Raymond Hoser

[chrisJumbo]

Thanks for the replies guys. "Jumbo" is an industry standard term so nothing to go after there. I did file a compliant with the SEC especially because they have a link implying they are registered. We will see what happens. I'll hold out some hope that the SEC cares enough.

As to trademarks, again, nothing to really trademark, so just have to hope they don't actually hurt someone's pocketbooks. At least, their ads won't show up on our site.

cd :O)

[PoisonJam]

It's worth contacting the webmaster; send a polite but firm email. It's unlikely, but they might be shamed into changing it. Definitely worth a shot IMO.

[clumberman]

Back in the "good" old days of eBay, we used to have people copying our pictures, right and left (on other web sites, too). I was using a somewhat distinctive background to shoot them, and our "fans" would complain to eBay and report violators for us. Nice to have a following! Back then, eBay would actually take down another auction on my say-so, without doing more than sending them my info and the offending info. Some of the worst offenders would rip off my descriptions, as well, and I got so that I'd purposely misspell stuff just to prove that someone else was plagiarizing me. Now, I just paste a copyright in my pics and shoot on a background that, while it can be cropped out, is distinctive, and leaves traces, even when cropped. There are "ripoff" sites where you can post comments about the copy and you should see if you can get a few bloggers to post articles about the wanker who ripped you off and the gov't. wankers who won't do anything about it...with appropriate backlinks to your site, of course.

[dgswilson]

There are 77,329 websites using that ip address at web.com Inc. Not sure what that means. I don't know how much a person could do to get on top of that type of keyword (s) jumbo, stargroup and all - it's like selling Nike, New balance and... What is anybody gonna put in an opening paragraph? In the code I see a lot of familiar web.com javascript stuff like a packaged site builder - so maybe someone swiped some text and rearranged it and dropped it in the boxes. I can't see where there is any legal issues though. Nobody owns those words - as long as you don't say, "Hi I am Nike, this is my swooosh". I don't know

[snakeman]

Gents, also if you are chasing action against infringers of your content, please be warned that it often takes time to get results and sometimes getting sense out of people doesn't seem to work.
One recent example is with a myspace account ripping off my snake man trademarks see our site at http://www.snakeman.com.au who was using his myspace site for seo and backlinks to his bootleg website. Along with other backlinks including over 800 on youtube (which we had deleted in May this year), he was able to usurp us (the trademark owners) on google search results pages and steal our clients, using his black hat SEO methods.
I approached myspace as far back as early 2009 and got nowhere and have periodically tried to kill the imposter page/s ever since. Anyway just today (within the last hour or so), I got an e-mail from them at Myspace telling me that they had finally closed the bootleg site.
For those unsure of how serious IP theft is treated in the courts, there is a lot on the web at the moment about the man who got a year's jail for ripping off and uploading "wolverine" before it's general release.
What surprised me most about that case was that it was the FBI who prosecuted it and not the copyright holder.
I think the stiff sentence was a warning to others including non-Americans (read Chinese), in terms of IP rights.
All the best
Snakeman