Forum Moderators: buckworks
I have an excellent client who launched a new ecommerce website roughly three weeks ago. I was placed in charge of running the internet marketing / SEO / SEM aspects of this operation due to my experience within the particular market (and with ecommerce in general).
Sales have been doing very well, and made our very first sale on day one with a small advertising budget. Now that we've started ramping up the marketing campaign, the website has really started to take off - and it's no surprise that competitors are taking notice.
About a week ago, a major clothing distributor in our market called and let us know that we're no longer able to "sell their products online". This seemed fishy, as they were extremely happy to have our business prior to this phone call. We certainly don't need them. Whatever.
... But now, earlier this evening - my client received a *nasty* email from the #1 competitor claiming copyright infringement on a number of STOCK images and 3 product descriptions which held one sentence of text.
We opted to remove the text. Again, no big deal. I am beefing up every single product description on a daily basis as it is. When everything is finished - he will want to be copying us!
Here's what bothers me:
Now everything is starting to come together. Our competitor has a huge deal with this clothing manufacturer who dropped us without so much as giving us a reason. I know for a fact he spends six figures on their product. Coincidence? I assumed so at first, but now I am not so sure.
I've also always vouched for this competitor as a "great guy", even as a competitor. I've even purchased from him in the past. When I sold my previous business in this same exact market (the $$$ was too good to pass up), he emailed me to congratulate me.
Here was a portion of his email:
<snip>
------
The competitor certainly doesn't know that I market this website. I am operating transparently. Is his anger justified, or do you think he is blowing smoke? Keep in mind that our website is pretty slick and picking up sales and credibility within our widget's market very quickly. Is he just scared?
Curious to hear your thoughts!
[edited by: lorax at 11:15 am (utc) on Oct. 1, 2007]
[edit reason] no email plz (see TOS [webmasterworld.com]) [/edit]
For copyright infringements; a few words doesn't cut the mustard. Calling something 'large green box' can't be a copyright infringement when that is the obvious reasonable label. Of course, where you live comes into it.
They may have skeletons in the attic, perhaps you should spend some time going through their website and alerting / encouraging anyone who might have a fair claim against them.
To my knowledge my client did not copy anything from their website - and these words could be found on nearly any product description on any website within our widget 's market.
The pictures are often given out or used on the actual clothing or sporting goods' manufacturer sites and that is where they were pulled from, with permission, not our competitor's website like he is claiming.
Buckworks: Previous to the phone call we received, they had no problems with us selling their products online, and their products are being sold online in at least 10-15 other web stores.
each had less than a sentence on them at the time.
Do a search in Google (at least) and I believe you will find your client's site above his site for those terms.
Previous to the phone call
Then the scenario I wondered about isn't what's happening. This is truly curious. Keep us posted about what you figure out.
first off, i just don't think its any of their business - second, you can avoid situations like this one where competitors (either online or mortar) try to cut off your product flow.
for example, if you are selling widgets, call your company acme wholesale, inc. and your website can be a d/b/a widgetworld.com
your competitors will never be able to figure out what name you are buying under etc.
Buckworks - I certainly will keep you posted. This is going to get really interesting and time goes on.
Wingslevel - You are right. Even though this supplier "dropped us", we can purchase their same exact line through an associate of my client for an extra dollar per widget. At our profit margin, this is NO problem. You have a really good idea there, and I will certainly make good use of it in the future. Thanks for the advice!
Sniffer - I see where you (and the competitor) are coming from. I certainly understand that angle. However, we felt that his email was completely out of tone. We are a smaller community and everyone knows everyone so he is burning bridges. At the rate our market is growing, there is more than enough room for all of us - and it isn't (or at least hasn't) exactly been a cut throat business to be in.
That being said... If he wants a war, he's going to have a war - And he is going to lose :).
If you're wrong, fix it. If not trash it.
Well put! It seems that C&D letters have become standard practice anytime new competition enters the field. I've gotten some real whoppers in the past, got one once that said
Your website is on the internet and that violates our copyright on internet based websites
In a related note - It looks like this competitor just signed up for our newsletter using his personal email account. Sneaky sneaky.
Cool, then make a "special" newsletter just for him every month. ;-)
3 weeks to hit the top of GOOG for many product keywords and SKU's - what a niche!
To make things even more interesting, we started the trademark process. Guess who let his trademark expire? YEP, #1 competitor.
If you try to register it yourself, you could either end up in an argument with the competitor in front of the USPTO, or in court if the competitor doesn't stop the registration process in time, as he tries to get yours invalidated. Either is a waste of time and money.
Consult a lawyer if you're not sure about it.
If you have a supply agreement with the distributor in question, they may be able to dictate that you can't sell online, hence their notification of that. There is no antitrust issue with that. If there's no agreement and they still sell the product to you, then obviously they can't stop you reselling it online, short of asking you to enter into an agreement with them.
As to the copyright infringement claim, are you sure you have the right to use the imagery and blurb? If the copyright is owned by the supplier, they may license it as they see fit (usually to their resellers but they don't have to let you use it if they don't want to). Given the supplier seems to want to give your competitor exclusivity in the online market, it may be that you are in fact now violating their copyright. If the competitor has a license to use it, they are within their rights to enforce that right, hence their lawyer's letter.
Again it comes down to your relationship with the supplier. For clarication, send a polite letter to the supplier asking confirmation of who is responsible for the copyright and would they please confirm your usage rights as one of their valued resellers.
IANAL.
The pictures are often given out or used on the actual clothing or sporting goods' manufacturer sites and that is where they were pulled from, with permission, not our competitor's website like he is claiming.
With the usual "IANAL", it would seem that, unless your competitor took his own photos, the only one who could claim copyright infringement on the images would be the manufacturer (in the U.S., anyway). But I'm basing that on how it works on a forum, where the forum has a license to use the poster's copyrighted material; the forum owner can inform a poster of a copyright infringement, but the poster needs to take it from there. So this may be handled differently in ecommerce.
ETA: I'd also go along with vince - Unless those are very creatively worded phrases (and not necessarily even then), the blurbs are too short to carry copyright.
[edited by: Beagle at 8:36 pm (utc) on Oct. 10, 2007]
For this business, there is/was no specific supply agreement. The market itself is still very cowboy and unprofessional. I am positive that we have the right to use the image(s) and short blurbs. We are in a very immature market, so I'm actually not that surprised by what took place. That being said, most of the products that he had an issue with have since been re-done and have much longer, much more unique descriptions attached.
He has not emailed us since with any sort of threatening notes - but he is watching our website daily.
beagle - You are correct. Manufacturers own the right to those pictures. The descriptions I would assume are up for grabs as everyone seems to use that same one liner of generic text found on the manufacturer's site.
We're up to about 5 orders per day at this point. If he's bitter now, I wonder how bitter he'll be when we eventually bury him.
... as much as I wanted to, I opted to just remove him from the email list.
I would rather keep him on the leash, and feed him with wrong information, otherwise he will sign up for the newsletter with an yahoo email address
We used to get contacted by manufacturers we worked with who had issues from other companies which had called them with various complaints against us. Sometimes the complaints were from brick and mortar stores and other times other websites. Fortunately we were working with fairly fair manufacturers who could treat everyone equally as far as possible. I could handle this since things were generally under contract.
Where we got off lucky was never getting pulled into having to communicate with other stores or competitors about these issues. I am almost positive they have called to gather info. about us without identifying themselves to no avail. Also, there was never a desire to constantly check up on competitors and complain or be a "rat" against them. Saved us the indignity of whining to a "parent" manufacturer about what is essentially a "sibling" competitor misbehaving.
I feel that it was an issue with greed as well, which I can respect in a certain sense. Overall, we've decided to take the high road on this one and beat him over the long term.
I haven't had any problems with this competitor since and certainly haven't had any further issues with our various manufacturer/suppliers. I'll chalk this up to experience :).
Late last night, the competitor I started this thread about contacted me asking what it would cost to jump ship. Eek. Can't blame him but... not exactly cool.
My client now owns many keywords in the market. This competitor is losing ground. I outsourced some SMO to a 3rd party while I was at PubCon. I said screw it, let's target this competitor's keywords since he thinks that he owns them. Let's hit him where it hurts.
My client now shows up (either directly or indirectly) for 5 out of 10 results on the 1st page of Google for the competitor's website - which also happens to be a highly desirable, though rather vague, key phrase in our market.
Oh yeah, and those huge key terms... we're now #1 for. :)
Late last night, the competitor I started this thread about contacted me asking what it would cost to jump ship.
That is funny.
Good work.
