How to protect your copyrighted work
So you wrote an article, or you developed a website and you find an almost exact clone of your work on the web. What to do?
The first thing you should do is contact the owner of the website with an official letter, such as “Cease and Decist”. The best way is to send a signed letter through post mail. If they don’t provide an address where they can contacted, try phone. As crazy as it may seem, you might want to record the conversation. Email is also good, but the paper will be more useful in court when you’ll have to prove you did warn the other party.
Don’t go too rough on them, since there are a number of website owners which are not aware they are the owners of an website which uses copyrighted work. That’s because the web designer / developer is the one responsible for that.
If there are no contact details whatsoever, contact the webhost and explain the situation in a legal manner. You can always start a lawsuit against the webhost for ilegally storing copyrighted material, so if they know what’s good for them, they’ll remove the website from their servers.
You will still need to come with strong evidence, through.
If you don’t get a positive response, or no response at all it’s time to consult the lawyer. There are several good websites that will help you get a good lawyer, if you don’t have one already.
If you want to earn money, you’ll have to prove that the work which was copied did in fact make you lose money.
You have a strong lawsuit when the clone website has the same purpose as yours, and shares the same customer. The reasons are obvious: they are unrightfully taking your customers using your own work.
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