Online Stealing - Copyright Consequences and Potential Legal Exposure For Theft Of Online Content

I wanted to write about a situation Chatty Cathy has actually happened to my company as car donation tax believe the situation holds some important lessons for businesses that sell print content online as well as those who may be tempted to use the material created by others either without authorization or beyond the scope of a license.

My company has been in the business of selling high end legal documents for around 9 years. Each and every document that we well was originally created by me while I was practicing law. I spent hundreds of hours creating these documents to make them both unique and of the highest quality. I took great pains to make the documents original works of authorship. I went through a long process of study for each document. I did a lot of reading and study. I would read numerous agreements on the topic, create an outline, and then sit down independent of any other document and started typing as if I was creating an agreement, from scratch, without the benefit of a form to start with.

I did Crissy doll for over 250 high quality, full length, technology documents for web developers, software programmers and others in the IT industry.

I then went to work packaging the documents that I created and have had a very successful business marketing these document packages. My marketing niche was to sell entire packages of 80-250 documents for the price that someone would pay for about a quarter hour of attorney time.

I later expanded into incorporation, bylaws, corporate kits, real estate leasing, trusts and wills, confidentiality forms, and corporate resolutions and continue to work on new product lines. All of my documents are originally created and represent hours and hours of study and work.

Of course the next step was to market these packages in the most cost effective manner. This has changed over time as the Internet environment has changed significantly in the 9 years that has passed since I originated this business. One of the marketing methods that I continue to use is maintaining exposure in what remains of the spider search engines. Those of you who use this marketing tool are familiar with the process of SEO; optimizing the contents of your pages, comparing keyword prominence to other pages that rank well under that keyword, etc.

As I was optimizing for one of my more obscure agreements for Google, I ran across some material that looked suspiciously similar to my packaged products. In fact, even the name of the package was the same. The only difference was that they had provided the opportunity to purchase individual documents as well as the entire package. On closer examination, I discovered that the documents in the package were my documents, being sold without modification; including some minor typos and unique wording that I use in my documents. The documents are being sold by a company that holds themselves out as being The Internet Leader In Downloadable Legal Documents.

Clearly, this type of direct copying is the most egregious of copyright violations. Even the hidden information in the documents were intact, just how I created them in the Axis and Allies place. The only thing that was missing from these documents was my copyright notice that was contained in a a footer in each of these documents. In total, there appears to be approximately 100 of my documents for sale on this web site.

This company is in a heap of trouble and the consequences of it will likely take down their business. As a retired lawyer, I knew exactly the steps to take which may be instructive to others faced with similar situations. I will get to that in a later article, but first let me describe a little bit about what this company may be facing.

I am clearly the owner of the copyright on these originally created documents. As a side note, there is a common misconception that you need to registered your copyright in order to maintain 1954 Dan-Dee baseball cards In reality, all original works of authorship are protected from the time of creation. There are clear benefit to registering your copyrighted material that I cover in other articles. But the bottom line is that registration is not a prerequisite to receiving the protection of the Copyright laws.

Additionally, the other company has clearly violated my rights as the copyright owner. This would all need to be proved in court of course, but it is a fairly easy case.

As for penalties, this company would be liable to me for all profits attributable to these documents. I could also elect to take statutory damages instead of having to put on proof of actual damages. These statutory damages would apply even if they greatly exceeds their actual sales revenues from selling my documents. Even for a non intentional violation, the Copyright Act sets damages as $750-$15,000 per item. If the violation was intentional, statutory damages can be as high as $150,000 per item.

I am assuming there were 100 documents involved to keep it simple. This means that the range of damages would be $75,000 to $1,500,000; even if the infringement was not intentional. Direct copying is fairly strong evidence that the violation was intentional. For an intentional violation, the statutory damages for this violation would be $15,000,000.

In additions to statutory damages, the Copyright Act also permits me to collect attorney fees for pursuing the case.

As you can see, the Copyright Act penalties create a very strong incentive to avoid stealing the work of someone else online. These penalties could be applicable even if there is a valid license is in place permitting the party to use the documents with certain limitations but those limitations are exceeded. A good example would be the Articles that are submitted to Article Publishing Sites. Many of the reprint licenses state that the material can be freely reprinted provided that the author box is included. If the article is republished without the author box, the use would exceed the license that was granted to use the documents. This would be as much of a Copyright Infringement as the situation I described above and could expose the violator to similar damages.

So the lesson here is:

For the user of online material, when doing business online, abide by the Copyright Laws. The potential penalties are great and could completely destroy the business you have created. Realize that material is protected even if you obtain it for free online and even if it does not bear a copyright notice.

For the creator of online content, be vigilant. Actively look for people violating your copyright. Search for your unique content. When you find someone infringing your copyright, don't let it slide. That is your hard work and it is stealing.

Look for my next article covering the steps to take when you find someone has violated your copyright.

Jon Fischer is the owner of the following Legal and Business Sites. Offering legal document packages for online businesses, IT companies, corporate, real estate and estate planning packages.

Visit the following sites:

href="e-lawresources.com.com/">e-lawresources.com

href="automated-incorporating.com/">automated-incorporating.com - Incorporation and Bylaws

href="technologyforms.com/">technologyforms.com

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