Well, at last somebody has stolen my content...

A well known training company has stolen an article of mine

[Jack_Hughes]

Can somebody who has been through this process please tell me how to go about stopping this.

I am based in the UK is there an equivalent to the Cease & Decease order here?

[RailMan]

just seen solicitor for same thing.
solicitor will send a letter to the other company demanding they take down your content and refrain from further infringements. this means "cease and desist".

does your article "belong to your business"?

[Jack_Hughes]

does your article "belong to your business"?

Yes it does. I wrote the article on company time. the article does say that it is the companies copyright.

So, I just send a solicitors letter basically.

[RailMan]

yes, more or less.

your solicitor will send them a letter demanding they take down the content immediately and threatening to get an injunction if they don't.

if they have earned from this work or if you have lost financially from it, you can demand damages, so the letter will demand that they reveal their income related to your work. be careful if you take on a large company - they may prefer to delay things until yu run out of cash.

if they fail to "cease and desist" then you can seek an injunction against them. expect this to cost £5000+. an injunction will probably last 14 days and then you need to seek an extension or something like that.

there is a scheme called "Lawyers for your business" where you get a free half hour interview with a solicitor.
[lawsociety.org.uk...]

you can request a list of participating lawyers from the law society. you'll need to contact them and find out if they deal with intellectual property / copyright / passing off etc. search for their websites and contact several of them. spend the time and you'll save a fortune in the long run.

[Jack_Hughes]

the article isn't an earner for us. I doubt it is for them either.

Rather than wheel the big guns out I'd prefer to try a more informal route first. Appeal to their honour :) Chances are their web designer borrowed the content without the company knowing anything about it. I always try to give the benefit of the doubt first.

[Jack_Hughes]

As things turned out their web designer did do it. They have now pulled the page.

[RailMan]

please to know some companies have honour!

my content is a fairly big earner so i'm taking them to the cleaners ........

[Jack_Hughes]

if our content was a direct earner I suspect that we might have a different perspective on things.

sounds like, if you are a small operator in the UK, a large company can steel pretty much whatever they like with the sure knowledge that you won't have the cash to stop them.

[RailMan]

sad fact of life that big companies can afford big lawyers to cause big problems and big cost to small companies.

it would be nice if the law gave more help to smaller companies ......

[JudgeJeffries]

I'm a UK solicitor and its a sad fact that almost every page that I have written has been copied to a greater or lesser extent by other solicitors. When I call them about it they often tell me to **** off (yes for real on many occasions) because they know that if its just a few pages then damages are unlikely to reach £5,000 and costs only follow if that hurdle is cleared. Damages are calculated in two possible ways being either the cost of production of the page or provable losses. Last year I claimed a very substantial sum from another firm that lifted 40 pages. Not sure about the costs rules for an injunction and it might be worth looking into if a written shot across the bows fails.

[RailMan]

>>Damages are calculated in two possible ways being
>>either the cost of production of the page or
>>provable losses.

as i understand it, if someone makes money from someone else's copyright material, that money is a "provable loss" ..... if you take the latest harry potter book and print and sell your own copies, every penny you earn from that belongs to the copyright owner ...... the web is no different ......