Copyright Lawyer
In today’s world copyright infringement runs rampant. If you are an author, you have seen your book copied and distributed for free. If you own a website you likely have dealt with the copying of parts of the site by a competitor. Thanks to Congress and others, you have powerful tools to combat this copyright infringement. You can try to handle the copyright infringement yourself or hire a copyright lawyer with strong Internet law experience to assist you. Here are the details of how to protect your copyright materials:
1) You do not have to possess a registered copyright with the US Copyright office. Your rights arise in the materials upon creation automatically. You will need at least a pending application to file a lawsuit, but that is a subject for another day. To monitor the web and find your stolen content set up Google Alerts and use Copyscape. Here is a video on the Copyscape services: About Copyscape.
2) Make sure you are the legitimate owner of the material. If you had a non-employee (like a contractor) create the work, do you have a written, signed transfer of the copyright materials to yourself or your business? Simply paying a contractor does not transfer copyright rights.
3) Go directly to the author if you honestly feel that approach might be productive and ask for the removal of the material. Understand that the author cannot remove postings and comments on some websites so this may not be a possible solution. Be aware that your demands could be published and a “Streisand Effect” attack launched against you that will increase the “pain” so this is often a complex decision. You can read about this type of attack in my book “Google Bomb” available on Amazon.com.
4) Go to a service provider such as a domain registrar, payment processor, advertiser, or webhost and advise them of the copyright infringement and ask their cooperation in removing access to the material or the website. You will find some will cooperate while others will not. Pay particular attention to the “terms of use” for the service provider and refer to a specific provision they are violating and claim an FTC or consumer rights violation for false and misleading advertising. Obviously you should only try this legal argument with the assistance of a lawyer because the demand letter may end up in the hands of General Counsel and he/she generally won’t respond to a non-lawyer. And, of course, the service provider will be more inclined to accede to your demands for removal if an impressive letter from an Internet lawyer is in play.
5) Don’t forget that you can use a “DMCA takedown notice”. This is a legal document, copies or examples of which are all over the Internet. By serving this notice on a webhost or domain registrar you can usually pull the site down quickly. There are some complications that could arise, however.
6) What if the webhost is overseas? Does the “DMCA takedown notice” work? If the webhost does business in the US it should be subject to the DMCA process. If it ignores your notice then you should determine the identity of the ISP for the webhost. Then serve them with a DMCA takedown notice and copy the webhost. At that point the webhost will likely pull the site down rather than risk losing its access for all of its customers because its ISP cut them all off. The same applies to domain name registrars. Consider serving a DMCA takedown notice on the registry for the particular type of domain name. These are all in the US.
7) What if the owner of the website files a counter-affidavit? Well, this means that the DMCA notice will not work. But remember that you can file it again and again if you want and a false affidavit can result in criminal prosecution for perjury. A new counter-affidavit is required for each service or filing of a DMCA takedown notice or the webhost has to pull down the website or copyright infringing material or risk being liable for contributory copyright infringement.
Each service provider is required by law to register with the US Copyright office information about the DMCA copyright agent for service. If there is not registration then there is no protection for the service provider under the DMCA process and that provider has potential legal liability for the copyright infringement. This should create great leverage to get what you want. But you don’t want the service provider to file the notice while you are discussing the situation or you may have to go back and use the DMCA takedown notice process and lose the leverage.
9) Obviously if you are serious about the situation it is often desirable to have a seasoned Internet Copyright lawyer navigate this process for you. The probability of success increases when the other side knows that you are serious and, even better, you can avoid the landmines. Remember that if you use a DMCA notice improperly that law could require you to pay the alleged infringer’s attorney fees. If a lawsuit is filed there is a fee shifting provision that generally makes the losing party pay the prevailing party’s attorney fees. And we have lately seen some very aggressive legal responses in the form of lawsuits against the claimant (that would be you).
10) Consider using the free Dozier Internet Law Copyright Infringement Warning Notice on your website to scare the infringer. Just having the button leading to the warning page reportedly reduces copying of the materials dramatically. Just follow the process for signing up and within seconds have the code in your hand ready to be pasted into your site code.
In closing, there are plenty of ways to deal with copyright infringement without investing huge funds in a federal lawsuit. We’ll work with you to figure out the most effective and efficient high quality solution.