***help! ***lawsuit***

1

I was hoping someone could offer me advice / counsel. Kirupa you’ve had some publishing experience I bet you have some good ideas.

A little more than 2 years ago I worked for a straight week on a proposal for a building contractor. Unfortunately, they said that “it wasn’t what they were looking for” and that they were “rather unimpressed.” I didn’t think anything of it because I’d been rejected before and it wasn’t anything new to me.

Get this: around 4am today, I was going through some of my old yahoo mail and found their web site and checked it out.

GUESS WHAT I FOUND? :angry: None other than a logo virtually identical to the one I made (even the same color code) with the caption text redone. I’m still taking screen shots and doing web research on intellectual property I also found out they 're messing with other copyrights such as stock photography (you can tell as they are low resolution) - and they also probably had to reverse engineer my flash presentation to get the graphics out.

I had a friend refer me to a great intellectual property lawyer - this guy sued some luxury car dealerships in the Houston area out of millions for infringing on his IT company’s database design. Money isn’t an issue but I wanted to get ya’lls opinion before I jumped into anything.

I’m really pissed / disappointed / frustrated not really about the money I lost, but because desktop / web publishing jobs are already thankless enough as it is and I can’t imagine why a multi-million dollar company can’t even spare a couple dollars, or even a THANK-YOU LETTER.

WHAT SHOULD I DO?

**
Please don’t ask for the web URL as I can’t give it out in order to protect myself. ** I hope you can work with the information I have here. What I can tell you is:

*I have 2 yahoo e-mails dated July 11 2001 saying that the company refused my proposal. The first one says he will ask his supervisor. The second one says him and his supervisor are “unimpressed.”

*Macromedia Flash source code with time / date stamp 2001.

*A strong portfolio with work dating from 1998

*an e-mail asking that they remove the graphics in question (with no reply)

*screen shots of the material in question (namely vectors, colors and theme).

*I went to photodisc and found the image numbers that they are using illegally

Do you think I have a case? I don’t have pay stubs, income statements, or receipts to claim damages. This is an intellectual property suit only.

Thanks in advance.

2

Hmm, I really don’t know. A site copied the animations and layout from the kirupa.com site, but after I contacted them about it, they were nice enough to remove it. I am not a big fan of lawsuits, but if they aren’t willing to co-operate, you may want to give that option a shot. I’m not a lawyer so I don’t know if you sufficient evidence or not.

I would first contact them about this. If they flat-out deny it or try to evade you, you should try the legal option.

Cheers!
Kirupa :ub:

3

Dreampod,
Is it identical or virutally identical, unfortunately even though you do most of the work, one thing different no longer makes it your owrk, not that you dont have a possible suit, you very well may on the grounds that the logo was something you produced for them…Ii I am understnading correctly.

Did you create the logo? Did you save your proposal that you sent to them? How did they go about having there sight down? Did someone else do it, w/the property you are pretty sure is yours or did they do it themselves after you gave them teh proposal?

Sorry, so many questions but I as far as the ownership of your property (your ideas) there are very fine lines because the laws are so new especially were the web and graphics are conserned you have to all your ducks in a row.

You may have a case/You may not. It doesnt hurt to speak to a lawyer but, like I said it is a fine line-on exactly the same thing or basically the same thing.

4


My understanding is that there is no safety margin for copyright violations. In laws concerning recorded and sampled music, just using two or three notes that are distinct can get you sued.

The first picture is part of a flash created by myself in 2001. The resulting logo and colors is now on the website and stationary; you can see they’re virtually identical.

[list]
[] I created the logo although not intentionally. But it’s still my work right?
[]There is no proposal paperwork (I did this when I was 19), but only two reply e-mails returned from them stating explicitly the work as a proposal and not paid work. The subject for the first e-mail was in fact “[Re:]Proposal” so they were never given permission, ownership, or any rights other than for viewing.
[/list]

5

Did you create the logo just for them? In other words did you send it to them and say here is a logo idea more or less, or did you take what they had and created something new that they ended up using.

Did they change to that logo after they decided not to go with you and if they did, did thye do it on there own or another company do it for them?

As far as the music , two or three notes of one section would be exactly the same if that makes any sense…Kind of hard to explain

I would suggest with out a doubt talking to an attorney but I am not sure exactly what he/she amy tell ya