Detecting Copyright Infringement

Search engines are not always the “enemy” in copyright infringement cases.  In fact, search engines can be quite useful in detecting copyright infringement. To detect copyright infringement using a search engine, copy the protected content from your web-page and paste the text into a search engine such as Google or Yahoo.  If you find a website using the exact text, it is likely that the owner of that website has infringed upon your copyright.  If you believe that you have detected copyright infringement, consult an attorney to determine your course of actions.  Nevertheless, you should familiarize yourself with some possible legal courses of action.  Additionally, you should familiarize yourself with some protective measures as well.

Legal Courses of Action

If you believe that someone or a company has infringed on your copyright, the first thing you should do is document proof of the infringement by downloading or printing a copy of the copyrighted material. After documenting the proof, contact an attorney and discuss your findings.  After speaking with an attorney you are likely to learn that your legal options include:

• Sending a cease and desist letter, citing the Digital Millennium Copyright Act

• Contacting the web host and asking them to take down the content

• File Digital Millennium Copyright Act violation notice with the search engine or directory where the infringing site is listed, and

• Filing a formal complaint in federal court

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Preventive Measure: Website Registration

Registering your website with the US copyright office is the most important preventive measure.  Registering your website allows you to purse a copyright infringement lawsuit, it such action is necessary.  You must have a Certificate of Registration for the protected work or a denial of Registration from the Copyright office to pursuit a lawsuit alleging copyright infringement.  Additionally, the benefit to registering is the availability of attorneys’ fees and statutory damages in the event of future infringement. It is important to continuously update your registration to ensure that search that the most recent version of your work is copyrighted.  For more information on how to copyright your online works see: http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ66.pdf.

 Additionally, you should register your website with the individual search engines.   Here again, it is important to continuously update your URL registration with search engines.  Registering with search engines allows you to increase your ranking with search engines and thereby making your information easily retrievable.  The higher your website ranks with search engines the less likely someone is copy the information on your website, because the infringement would be too obvious.  For an example of how to register your website site see: http://www.google.com/addurl/?continue=/addurl.

REFERENCES:

• Search Engine Marketing FAQ, at http://www.seologic.com/faq/copyright.php (last visited Apr. 11, 2005).

• Richard Keyt, Internet Copyright Law: A Rat Pilfered My Web Site Cheese- What Do I Do?, at http://www.keytlaw.com/Copyrights/cheese.htm (Nov. 9, 2002).