Digital evidence of copyright violation

How to secure digital evidence of copyright violation?

[leto]

Suppose one my competitors uses my images on his website. How can I make sure that I can proof the copyright violation even after he removes the image? Screenshots and Wayback Machine are the only things I can think about but I’m not sure if they’re ‘official’ enough for use in court for example.. Any suggestions?

Thanks

[BigDave]

They are official enough with an affidavit stating that you are being truthful. The threat of purjury charges are supposed to be enough to encourage your honesty.

It is even better when you have your lawyer do it, or a respected third party. You generally can't pay your lawyer enough to risk disbarring because of falsified evidence.

If you are even thinking that it might go to court, you should have a lawyer already, and you should be asking that lawyer how they want to handle that proof. It is what you are paying them for, after all.

[willjan]

In US Federal Court, the burden of proof falls on the defendant. You claim copyright infringement, they must prove it is not. A terrific advantage for the copyright holder.

In any event, as advised, it sounds as if you should have a competent IP lawyer.

Willjan

[nonni]

If he removes the images, then he is no longer in copyright violation - makes it harder to document his crime for a lawsuit, but it reduces the harm.

Consider embedding comments in images, or watermarking them. This is not always foolproof - comments can be changed, watermarks can be blurred if the image is resized, etc. But many thieves are too lazy to do anything to remove these simple markers.

[TerriGW]

I discovered a competitor using my images Tuesday and put together an HTML document with a sampling of our images and the link to usage our site, and their image (exactly like mine) and a link to their site where it was used. I saved it as an MHT doc for now, downloaded copies of the stolen images and have them locally for future reference. Our CEO was contacting them. We just want them to quit using them, no lawsuit. But I have a "hard copy" so to speak.