We were reading our Tweets this morning when we came across this one from a friend who is a retail consultant, "Just had a company copy my work and call it their own. NOT happy." No kidding. Who would be?
Unfortunately, we were able to give our friend some advice: Call your attorney. Working like crazy to establish your business only to have it knocked off by a competitor isn't a whole lot of fun. It happens to retailers, too. What do you do when the new guy in town models his sales floor after yours, duplicates your newsletters and your promotions? And what happens when that copy cat retailer offers the same classes, at the same time, on the same day – for less? That’s the question we were presented with recently by a frustrated reader. What was she to do?
Actually, this is a question we’ve heard a lot over the years as less than scrupulous, less talented people decide the easiest way to get into business is to steal ideas from someone else. There is a huge difference in being inspired by someone else’s creative ideas, and actually claiming them as your own. And we know it’s a dilemma designers and vendors dance with each day. It hit home a few years ago when we discovered another speaker had been lifting seminar copy directly from our website, and passing it off as her own. And it worked because that speaker was getting bookings using our original, copy written and trademarked materials. We traced this behavior all the way back to 2000 when we found one of our articles published under her name. We have absolutely no idea how much this hurt our business, but we do know that it did. And you’d better believe we took serious legal action.
A retailer dealing with a copy cat has a tougher road.
Never publicly call attention to a competitor, but make sure that you know what they are up to. Be aggressive in your research: shop their stores, read their ads, websites and blogs. Follow them on Twitter and fan them on Facebook. Get an e-mail address that’s not connected to your business and sign-up for every, single thing they offer for free. And go to Google.com and set up a Google Alert on any name or topic you want to monitor. Every time your topic is mentioned anywhere on the Internets, Google will send you an e-mail and a link to where it was mentioned. Click here to get started: http://www.google.com/alerts
In this day and age you have to protect what belongs to you. When that other speaker stole our stuff we were glad that we had taken the time to protect our intellectual property. You should, too. When something is really important you need to apply for a Federal Trademark. The letter R within a circle – ® – signifies a trademark that has been registered with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. This symbol may not be used before an actual federal trademark has been granted, but until this happens, you can claim your right to your work with a Trademark (TM) or Servicemark (SM) symbol. You can learn more about trademarks, servicemarks and copyrights at the United States Patent and Trademark Office website: http://www.uspto.gov/
Take an extra step. Add the following to the end of each your original works (project sheets, articles, pages on your website, blog postings, e-mail blasts, Facebook, brag sheets, bag stuffers, etc.):
Copyright . Dates . Author/Owner . ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Like this:
Copyright . March 16, 2010 . KIZER & BENDER . ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
