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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.
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.
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:…..
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