Plagarizing Content, Redirects, Hidden Text

[Captain]

Our company has a staff member that composes articles relevent to our industry for our client's benefit.

We have a competitor that copies the articles within a few hours of us posting the content.

We have contacted the competitor and they vowed to never do it again. Of course, they have continued the practice.

The competitor also posts hidden text and uses hundreds of pages of hidden content with re-directs. To our dismay, they started with a PR 3 (now they have a PR 7) and have started surpassing our listings in Google.

This has been frusterating because we are "playing by the rules" and have staff members on payroll that is virtually "working for the compeition".

Does anyone have experience with this type of situation? We rely heavily on Google for web traffic and I do not want to do anything to pester Google about the matter (because we rely on them so heavily).

We issued two spam reports over the course of 2 months and nothing was done. Any advice you can provide (we do not wish to incur legal expenses) is very much appreciated.

Thanks!

- The Captain

[le_gber]

try to post another one and mention webmasterworld, googleguy, and you nickname.
I've read that it is usually fast and efficient ...

good luck

leo

[born2drv]

Send a letter to the hosting company he is with informing them of the copyright infringment and tell them you will seek legal action against them because they are aiding the copyright infringment.

I'm sure they'll remove it right away. If they don't, go up one higher and have the hosting company's host remove them. Along the line I'm sure you'll find someone that will listen to you.

[jpavery]

I've seen results removed from Google for viloation of the DMCR (copyright) - so go the spam venue again, but point out the infringment as well
JP

[d_fused]

Captain wrote: "Our company has a staff member that composes articles relevent to our industry for our client's benefit.
We have a competitor that copies the articles within a few hours of us posting the content."

Hi ya. Same problem here. A small-time player is constantly on the look out for some fresh content on our web sites which automatically is displayed on his own pages.

Pictures, texts, metatags, titles, keywords, etc. He even had a couple of domains with our logo on them, with enquiry forms sending details to his own e-mail.

I asked him to remove the content a few times. No reply. Then I simply found a way to get into his host, and... removed the domains from the DNS. Two day later, he got in touch with me threatening me with some dirty scam... so I enabled his domains again.

The content is still there, and if by any chance one of my superiors saw that.... this guy will be in trouble.

I know it is sometimes a bit.... savage, but it helps. just find the guy and smack him in the face.

100% garantee he will not copy your stuff again.

mho

Regards

[dwilson]

we do not wish to incur legal expenses

I understand that, but if you can afford a full-time employee to write content, can't you afford some legal fees to reap the benefit of that content? These thieves need to be shut down.