Someone Stole My Content!

A strong digital presence is a key to the success of any business. But what should a business owner do if their website content is stolen and used by another party, possibly a competitor? It is not surprising that online plagiarism is quite common, but website owners do have rights regarding their digital material.

Written website content is a protected product. It is considered intellectual property, so it is important for businesses, like law firms, to understand their rights and know how to protect them when their website content is stolen. Learn what to do if your website content is stolen.

Does Website Content Have to be Copyrighted or Trademarked?
No, businesses do not have to have original content copyrighted or trademarked. Once it is written and published online by the author, it immediately becomes their intellectual property, and no one is allowed to copy it or use it as their own.

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The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) of 1998 protected all published online material. This act also implemented rules regarding copyright infringement. Suppose an online service provider publishes material copied or stolen from another provider. In that case, they must remove that material if they receive a notice of infringement claim from the original content owner.

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Protecting Your Online Content
One way to proactively protect your business’s intellectual property is to regularly check for duplicate content. Businesses can check for plagiarized material using several means, including:

• Google Searches: Copy and paste an excerpt of an article believed to be stolen into Google and run a search. Be sure to place quotations around the excerpt. If the content has been posted on any other web page, that web page will come up in the search.
• Google Alerts: Using Google, a business can set up alerts that will automatically notify them if words or phrases from their business content appear online. Words or phrases set off by quotations may be tagged for alerts.
• Google Images: Google image searches will help a business discover if anyone has stolen images from their online content. You will need to upload an original image or URL in the Google image search engine to run a Google image search. The results will let you know if your images, photos, illustrations, or drawings are on other websites.
• Notifications of Trackbacks: Most bloggers use publishing platforms that offer trackback notifications. A trackback notification means that the owner of a website will be notified if someone links to their website. Web content owners will automatically be notified if another website links to theirs. This provides a great opportunity to check and ensure that those who link to your website are not using your content as their own.
• Plagiarism Checkers: Many online checks look for identical content on the internet. To use one of these plagiarism checkers, a business owner simply enters a URL or a chunk of text, and the checker does the work for them and searches for content similar to the content thought to be stolen. A popular plagiarism checker is Copyscape. Many plagiarism checkers, like this one, offer limited free subscriptions. However, paying the extra fees may be worth it to ensure your original written content is protected.

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What Should a Business Do When Searches Reveal That Content Has Been Stolen?
If someone has stolen your online content, do not panic, you have several options:

1. Contact the Website Owner Directly. Find the owner’s email address. You can usually find this information in the Contacts section of a website. Contact the owner and politely let them know your original material is being used on their website. Make sure they know that you are the owner of that original work. Advise them that you will file a complaint of infringement if they do not remove the stolen content. In most cases, this will resolve the issue. Most businesses do not want the hassle of dealing with an infringement claim.

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2. Notify the Web Hosting Service. If contacting the website owner directly does not solve the problem, you will want to reach out to the web host. To find the web hosting service, search the URL of the site that poaches your content. This search should pull up the web hosting service for you.

Once you have found their email or contact information, call or email them and let them know that your intellectual property is being used without your permission on one of the sites they host. Request that they remove it from their site. Let them know that you will file a complaint if it is not removed. Most website hosts will work to ensure that the stolen content is removed; some may even eject the entire website.

1. Contact Google directly. If the website owner or the hosting service does not accommodate your requests, go directly to Google. Ask them to have the content removed from their search engine. Google will investigate your claim and will bar the guilty parties from future Google search results and revoke services like Google AdWords, a revenue-generating service.

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2. As a last resort, you can file a DMCA complaint. Filing a DMCA complaint against another website owner can be accomplished using Google Webmaster Tools. This complaint should be filed with the hosting provider of the plagiarizing website.

As stated previously, web content theft is quite common. There is not much that businesses, like law firms, can do to prevent duplication of web content, but they can take some preventive actions to protect their original work from being stolen.

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Using the copyright notice and Terms of Use section for your website might not prevent someone from stealing your online intellectual property, but it may deter them. This will show a potential thief that you are serious about protecting your original online content and are willing to use the law to defend your rights if needed.

Digital Marketing Next Steps
Digital marketing is a key component of competitive marketing. Duplicate content can seriously affect a company’s online digital presence, search engine rankings, and reputation. Knowing how to protect your digital intellectual property is a key component of a strong digital marketing strategy.

Annette Choti, Esq. graduated from law school 20 years ago, and is the Founder of Law Quill, a legal digital marketing agency focused on small and solo law firms. Annette wrote the bestselling book Click Magnet: The Ultimate Digital Marketing Guide For Law Firms, and hosts the podcast Legal Marketing Lounge. She is a sought-after keynote and CLE speaker throughout the United States and Canada. Annette used to do theatre and professional comedy, which is not so different from the legal field if we are all being honest. Annette can be found on LinkedIn or at at [email protected].

Topics

Annette Choti, DCMA, Digital Marketing, Plagiarism, Small Law Firms