i've been ripped by a merchant!

**jrisby** · 28-07-04

just found out that one of the merchants on AW has ripped off the design of one of my sites.

my site promotes one of their competitiors through an indie programme, and they have heavily used the design for their own mini site, even the domain is the same except with a hypen!

i've sent them a polite email asking them to remove the site by the end of the month.

some people, eh? ah well, shows i must be doing something right.

**Shane** · 28-07-04

lmao

just send them a polite

"hi it seems whilst you were blatantly plagerising my site you inadvertantly removed my affiliate links for your program, please could you either reinstate the affiliate links, design your own fecking site or forward a cheque for £5k for the design"

**tomj** · 28-07-04

name and shame..........

**Dynamoo** · 28-07-04

Cough cough splutter splutter.

It's amazing where stuff ends up. I've had quite a few cases of late where my content has ended up on merchant's sites, including text and graphics.

The biggest suprise I've had recently is where a major company that everyone will have heard of "borrowed" an image from me of one of their *own* products which I in turn had "borrowed" from one of their press releases and reworked somewhat. Oh well.. I guess it *was* theirs to begin with.

Oh yes.. serious answer. A polite but firm email is always useful. If making specific demands, set a realistic deadline for them to be met. Don't be too specific about what action you'll take. I now have a "fees" page on some of my sites advising copiers that the charge for my advertising copy is £1000 per page.. that certainly seems to get a quick response.

As well as the intellectual property rights, there are safeguards against abusive domain registrations if it's a .co.uk.

If the site is a big earner for you, consider trademark protection in the future.