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Stolen original material from my web page – is this actionable?

March 23rd, 2010 Ifydcat

I am a personal trainer and I specialize in training golfers. A company I was contracted to not only stole my excercise program, they also stole my ad and the description of my services verbatim from my web page! They are now advertising it as their own.

There was nothing in our contractual arrangement that provides for their assumption of my materials and no non-disclosure agreement.
Just a contract to provide services from my company to theirs.

Is this actionable as in the theft of copywrited material or intellectual property? The web page is copywrited (actualy, not registered but it says “copyright”.

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4 Responses to “Stolen original material from my web page – is this actionable?”

  1. newyorkgal71 says:
    March 23, 2010 at 4:14 pm

    Copyright is sufficient. You can hire a lawyer and sue them for damages to your business reputation.

  2. msi_cord says:
    March 23, 2010 at 4:31 pm

    This is a fairly tough one. Unless you have a registered copyright for the materials on your website, it could be claimed that you posted it in the public domain and be difficult to take legal action on. I would contact a copyright attorney and see what the specifics are for this type of situation.

  3. Rikkitikkitavi says:
    March 23, 2010 at 5:06 pm

    It’ll be tough but I think you might have a case against them. You have a contract showing that there was a meeting between the 2 parties. The only thing that can hurt you is if you didnt protect your material.Even so you can show the courts your site AND their site to show the similarities and if you can prove you had your site first,you might have a chance

  4. Discipulo legis, quis cogitat? says:
    March 23, 2010 at 5:07 pm

    it is actionable

    many people get the registered copyright thing confused. The law before 1976 required you to register your copyright.

    Today you have to show two things:

    The material was fixed in a tangible medium (web page databases fall into this)

    The material is a work of original authorship

    If you prove that you wrote it (by showing your own webpage) and that you were the author, you satisfy this element.

    Satisfy both and your work is covered by the Copyright Act of 1976 and enjoys its protections. (you don’t even have to publish a work for it to get the protection, you only have to write it down)

    I can’t tell you what your damages are yet because we haven’t gotten that far in the semester. In some instances it could be 100% of their profits plus extra in damages.

    Write them a cease and desist letter and contact an intellectual property lawyer

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