Comments on: When Is It Okay To Copy Your Competitors?

By: J

Fri, 03 Mar 2017 23:49:42 +0000

There is a local company that has continually mimicked my ads to the point where they are literally taking my photos that I spent time custom making and simply duplicating them. You can even see our watermark text in the pictures. Then today I see that they copied another ad and this time they used everything I wrote word for word. To the point where you can clearly see all the heartfelt words used by me personally for years in how I speak to consumers. It is sickening.

The problem is that they have done some pretty awful things to me personally and I am stuck in a hard spot because I fear they will do whatever it takes to get dirty and attack me if I complain or take action. I want this to stop so bad because I am sick and tired of people confusing me for them! I have had people that feared doing business with me because they thought I was them hiding under another name because our ads looked the same.

By: Nehemiah

Nehemiah — Thu, 08 Dec 2016 00:42:19 +0000

We’re a parenting magazine dedicated to “bringing back the village.”

We hold events call Gather.
We’ve had Gather The Village which are events for mothers to gather together, and Gather The Makers, gathering business entrepreneurs.

Now a bigger event company is ripping of our Gather idea. Our slogan is “Gather the Village.” They liked all of our social media pictures, are starting an event called “Gather” with the same type face, and changed their hashtag to #bring on the village.

What do we do. They are starting something so similar to us.

By: Stacy K.

Stacy K. — Sun, 09 Oct 2016 05:15:28 +0000

So I have a former landlord, who persistently pleaded with me to have him as a partner in my business. But after several attempts with no success, has decided to open a similar burger joint with all similar recipes in New Jersey. He took some of my employees, who gave him my recipes, that I worked so hard to create for many months. He is about to open the burger joint sometime this month, today, he posted a photo of one of his burgers on his website, and it is exactly the same as my burgers. His menu, and almost all the items on them are exactly the same as mine, except that he has different names for the burgers. I feel like I have been ripped off, and I do not know how to go about this.

By: Julia Winman

Julia Winman — Wed, 22 Jun 2016 09:12:24 +0000

Hi I have been reading with interests the stories on copying contents from your website.

Still I am surprised how others get away with it:
I am a company based in Turkey in a small village of Uzumlu. I run along with my partner a construction, estate agency business. Our company has been going since 1998 with no issues. Until I discovered my pure accident, a local English man in our village has copied our website, even down to the logo. Our company is call villahomesturkey.com. our company colours are red and blue. our logo is a square split in two one side red one side blue. Its very distinctive and very well know in the area.

His recent link to a website selling houses, rentals and car hire is called villahomesturkey.co.uk. same logo, same colours and same text. he even wrote on the bottom of the link: We are for defendantly not associated with a similar website of a estate agency in Uzumlu.

This is just not acceptable, I have now closed our website and feel the only way to sort this is to completely change our face. But this has angered me, that though I have asked forums and even google can they enforce a shutdown on this link.

We have been successful for all these years and are very much use to competitors, but this really take the biscuit, that a person not legally able to work in this country, who lives in the same village, can set up a web link using my company’s Logo, text and colours and get away with it..

I feel I have no choice but to shut down and build a bigger and better site, which of course is costing me funds. However I then beg the question, what happens if it happens again?

Can I do anything to shut down this link?

Look forward to any help or advice on my issue and story.

Julia Winman
Villa Homes Turkey

By: david malone

david malone — Wed, 20 Jan 2016 04:44:42 +0000

i have a lock on my boat that broke because the guts are cheap material i remade said part with better material and improved the design can i resale this part to consumers as my own part or is that illegal

By: Jhonston Blogs

Jhonston Blogs — Mon, 21 Dec 2015 20:38:11 +0000

I do marketing for the automotive industry. Every promotion I put out is something my team and I painstakingly come up with, and every time, they are copied, nearly, if not exactly, word for word by our direct competitor. It’s gotten to the point where I want to IP block them from our website. I do not know if what they are doing is legally, or just morally black, but it is quite annoying. Why can’t they come up with their own ideas, instead of stopping as low as stealing ours?

By: John

John — Mon, 19 Oct 2015 14:32:18 +0000

So, my martial arts gym recently updated their website complete with sub-sections and quoted testimonials with pics.

Problem I noticed was none of these photos or supposed members were in fact members. I googled one name out of the bunch and soon found no less than 27 other martial arts gyms with the exact same web design, word for word, pic for pic and testimonial quote for testimonial quote. It appears all of these businesses turned to the same marketing company to design and market their gyms.

This upsets me quite a bit to see this. Is this even legal? If so, at the least it feels very unethical. Worst part is, we have great members who would gladly give real stories and real quotes.

By: Timothy Terrell

Timothy Terrell — Mon, 14 Sep 2015 01:37:10 +0000

A company which is franchised, has a process that is claimed by them to be copyrighted. They offer a customer a discount, a few services of value, in exchange for a monthly service fee. They offer a good, better, best approach, I am offering a basic, advance, and premier approach. they offered a 15% discount, I offered a 10%, but I offered a few additional services for the same amount of money…am I violated copyright law? I had my offer on my website, but pulled it however, I want to market it because it is smart business. Go Daddy does it, Insurance companies do it, many businesses do it, I just want to know more about it, but can’t find anything in caselaw, statute, etc…to define my situation, it is now all about digital.

By: Robert Lane

Robert Lane — Thu, 27 Aug 2015 14:15:08 +0000

As a freelance graphic designer it can be difficult to not be inspired by another designer’s work, but I can agree that an exact rip off can be damaging. Sometimes it’s more about the spirit in which it was done and the honesty of the persons involved.

By: Sharan

Sharan — Sat, 01 Aug 2015 19:50:42 +0000

Hi please get me out of this problem me and my friends started developing an app which is about music but we found the similar app which is very popular in another country and has many users it is not very much famous in my country, the concept of that app and ours is 70% similar so shall we continue our app with some differentiating feature please suggest us