A few days later, I checked the URL and the home page had an “under construction” notice. This made me believe that they had complied with our request to cease and desist the copyright infringement of our home inventory service website and all was settled.

For some reason, though, a few days later I felt a need to do a little more digging. Unfortunately, I found that the site was not taken down, nor even edited at this point. The only change made was the home page!

This proved to me that they still had the intention to use our site and content as their own. At this point, I notified our webmaster, as her name and contact link was in the footer of this website. Though we have the copyright, she didn’t want her name associated with someone who was not willing to abide by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

This has been a process that I hope to never have to go through again. And unfortunately, it’s not over. I will continue to watch for their site to go live – hopefully with new content!

There is one other issue I must mention here. We also own a turnkey business package company, Hartman Inventory Systems. Similar to a franchise, we provide, among many other items, a complete marketing package which includes a website. Our Hartman Inventory service company website is the template for these sites, which means that our Group Members purchase the right to this website. We must pursue those who infringe on our copyright for ourselves, but also for those who have properly and legally invested in the rights to this design and content!  Additionally, if others use our site and/or content, the confusion of association could happen. In essence, we are protecting our Group Members’ rights as well as our own.

With the plethora of information on the internet today, this will remain an issue. All business owners must be diligent in fighting this cyber theft. We spend too much time and effort building our companies to allow anyone to steal our most important asset – our intellectual property!

The first thing I did was call our business coach, J.Sewell Perkins. She is a great mentor and advisor and exactly what I needed. It is important to handle this type of issue – and any issue for that matter – properly and professionally.

We decided that it’s possible this person didn’t know that it was illegal to copy others’ information (I’m surprised to learn that many think if it’s on the internet, it’s fair game!). We wanted to give this new business owner the benefit of the doubt, so we chose to contact her.

When looking at WhoIs.com, the only name available was the technical advisor. Therefore, I sent a letter to him via email and registered letter stating our findings and requesting that the site be taken down in accordance with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998. We requested that he sign and return the agreement by a specific date. He emailed and stated that he was creating this site as a favor for a friend who is starting a home inventory business. He admitted that it was a shoe-string operation, that they liked our site design and decided to use it as a basis to start from. He continued to state that they did not respect our privacy, and hoped that it wasn’t compromised. He also promised to return the signed agreement promptly.

I don’t know about you, but if I got a letter of this type, I would take it seriously! We didn’t hear from him by the deadline, so additional research was my next step. I was able to locate the owner of the company through a search on the internet that took me to a LinkedIn page. A second letter was sent out with a request for immediate response, letting the owner know I had not heard from the web developer.

Rather than hire an attorney, we chose to handle it this way because, based on the words the web developer used (shoe-string), we had to assume that funds were at a minimum. And, as with others who have experienced copyright infringement, all we wanted was to have the site taken down and that they create – and pay for – their own material. It is not just the copied work that is at issue here. The time and money spent on creating the website, writing the content, etc., runs into the tens of thousands of dollars. This is theft, plain and simple.

At the same time, I also notified the hosting company that this site was infringing on our copyright. I was required to provide proof of our date of copyright and also send screen shots of both websites, validating my claim.

By this point, this was taking up a huge amount of my time, which would be much better spent working on our business! I see why others pay a company to handle these issues! (We now have all of our websites protected and monitored by DMCA.)

We finally received the signed agreement, stating they would cease and desist using our website code and content. They also promised to take their site down immediately. But did they?

Using Google Alerts also helps me easily stay up to date on the home inventory industry. I can scan the information quickly to find useful information about the various needs for a home or business inventory.

I was recently reading my daily Alert when I noticed that a new home inventory company had been established. It is always interesting to me to review these new sites, see where they’re located, and how they’re providing their service, etc.

Was I surprised when I clicked on this specific link and was looking at “our” website, but under their domain name! The only thing that was different was the name of the company! I was shocked. Then I was angry! They had copied our site! And not just the content, they had also copied the code, photos, color scheme – everything. It was an exact copy! Copyright infringement at its “finest”.

Once all the emotions subsided, I showed Mike, husband and business partner, what I had discovered. It was interesting watching him mentally download what he was seeing, and going through all the emotional stages I had just completed.

Once I got a grip on the reality of the situation, we had a huge decision to make: what to do about it!