What Would You Do if another Retailer was Copying Your Product Descriptions?
February 5, 2008
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Grant a wish! We’d love your feedback on this critical issue. Here is an email I received from a Startup Princess recently:
I have an issue that I thought you might be able to provide some insight. 90% of the product descriptions on my site are written by me. I spend many hours writing them as best as I could. Sometimes I look at other retailers for ideas, but ultimately the work is different than everyone else’s.
We are the first to carry quite a number of items, I know because I research online like mad on less common items. As these products become popular and talked about, other retailers start to notice and start carrying them also. That’s great and dandy, and expected, but the thing that is bothering me greatly is, I recently came upon 2 sites that started carrying the items after us, and found they have copied my descriptions word for word, down to the punctuation and quotations. I recognize my own work and it is obvious those descriptions/content came from our website.
Couple of things to keep in mind, (1) I don’t know if they are aware the content/work is my original. However, (2) the manufacturer/distributor for these particular products do not provide descriptions.
I do realize that people are likely going to copy if they see something is good and nice, but it is my own original work and content that they are stealing!! What can I do, what do I say, and how do I approach these retailers? Or should I just let it go, what would you do if you were me? Thanks in advance for any advice / tips you can provide. I do not want others to steal my work.
I had written out some great stuff, but after looking for something found this instead. This is a great tool for helping you with your frustrating situation.
http://www.loriswebs.com/stop-stolen-content.html
I found one more link that might be helpful too!
http://lorelle.wordpress.com/2006/04/10/what-do-you-do-when-someone-steals-your-content/
You own a copyright in original ideas you express in a fixed media (such as a written document). Your product descriptions on your web site qualify. You can simply contact the infringing site(s) tell them that they have used copyrighted reviews without permission and must remove them or (and this is up to you if you want to give permission) give credit to the owner by quoting the source.
Unfortunately, copying on the Internet is done all the time, it is difficult to police it, but if you find it happening, that is all you have to do.
If you have not already done so, make sure you put a (C) on the bottom of your web site pages with your name or company name, the calendar year (or years) you created the materials containted on the pages, and the phrase “all rights reserved” this is a type of no trespassing sign to help others understand they are not welcome to copy.
Good luck
Kim Scoville
Fairy Godmother and IP Attorney
Silvermark Services PC
Thanks for the great resources mentioned so far! I think this is all great advice! I checked out the link that Lisa mentioned and found this website http://www.copyscape.com/ mentioned as a place that will search for content on the web that matches your own and found an eBay seller using some word for word content from my “about us” page for her own about us page LOL–oh my!
Many of the items I carry are from local crafters, and I have noticed not only copying of the description but copying the idea of the item as well. Like you, I would not mind them contacting the vendor- at least then it would help out the original inventor- but copying the idea exactly bothers me.
Sometimes it is hard to police because the wording is changed just enough that it is questionable. Unless is it verbatum, it seems like it would be hard to prove. I am wondering if maybe they do not know you wrote it? Hopefully contacting them will solve the issue!
I run into this same problem over and over, again. The retail website I market online is packed with content and buyer’s guide information. I always send an email letter reminding the person who takes our content that it is protected by copyright and I always ask them to please remove it immediately. I usually get some kind of response back but always have to follow up to be sure the content is gone and sometimes they don’t remove it at all.
I use http://www.copyscape.com every so often for specific pages. But you have to pay for it if you want them to monitor where your content is being duplicated. If you just have a small site it’s around 19.99/month and probably worth it - http://www.copyscape.com/copysentry.php. If you have a larger site, it can get expensive.
The biggest thing is to let the person who has lifted your content know you are watching and aware of what has happened. Hopefully, that alone will dissuade them from doing it in the future.
[…] a search on the web to see if your work is being copied - Carla showed me a post on Startup Princess which had a cool link (in the comments) to Copy Scape. You can type in your page URL into the […]
As a follow up…Craft Boom blog wrote more about this issue and found Heather and Sonya’s comments about copyscape.com to be very helpful. This is the value of great comments, thanks so much.
the link: http://emomsathome.com/craft-boom/copyright-ways-to-prevent-your-content-from-being-stolen/
Thanks for all this info. What great timing too. A similar thing has happened to us, and after working so hard for so long to get our product out there, it is very upsetting to see another competitor take our exact wording quoted from our own children’s therapists and other copying like that… i wasn’t sure what to do. I am very appreciative of all the good websites and guidance you guys wrote about.
Thanks.
Michal from Baby Ktan
Thanks to everyone who gave suggestions and resources on this copying issue. I am not very good with confrontations - but I have finally composed the email to be sent to these people. I hope it will be enough to get them to change the contents. I really don’t want to think about what I must do next if they refuse.
I’m curious what Heather from Mom 4 Life did/said to her copycatter, and how the outcome was.
Entrepreneurship is hard enough by itself, can’t everyone just get along and behave how one would want to be treated?!
Dear “It Was Me who Asked”:),
You mentioned that you would like to know what I said to the person who had copied much of the wording from my about us page and what the outcome was. I said, “I came across your about us page and thought it was amazing how similar our stories are. You can find my story here http://www.mom4life.com/pages/aboutus.php” and left it at that hoping she would get the “hint”. I have checked back a few times after that and she hasn’t changed it:(. I don’t know how big of a deal to make of it or how much to push it so I haven’t done anything else yet.
Great job having the courage to stand up for your hard work and companies! Thanks for sharing and updating us on your action plans “the one who asked” and Heather too…anyone else bold enough to confront someone on this topic?