Hi all, One of my clients has received a "cease and desist" email from a company in the US (my client is in the UK) who is claiming the following..... Your promo video and parts of your website and recent media release are a blatant copyright infringement of our work. YOUR VIDEO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7KwZ1DXuwAo OUR VIDEO: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4JwadPw1gM The script used in your video is almost verbatim to ours which was written produced and uploaded almost two years ago. YOUR PRESS RELEASE: http://www.digitaljournal.com/pr/1879793 Unless these are changed or removed within 72 hours. Will be proceeding with legal action. Code (markup): Here is some of my points and bear in mind I am not a lawyer specialising in International copyright, even less so with this scenario: 1. The video was professionally created through vinimation.com and the script is at least 50% different than theirs. I mean you cant talk about voiceovers without using similar industry talk so some aspects might be viewed as being similar. Our graphics are totally unique, the voiceovers are british and we use different music. They really are not the same IMHO. 2. The web site was made through 99designs.com and if you compare the two web sites they could not be more different. 3. I dont understand why they are saying the press release is infringing copyright as I wrote that myself and its 100% unique. 4. they have also tweeted the following on their twitter account: "your promo video and website is a blatant copyright infringement of ours. We will be pursuing legal action unless taken down.", so could that be viewed as slander seeing that nothing is proven? They are basically saying my client has broken the law. 5. They are a US company and my client is a UK company, can this make a difference to their "claim"? 6. As far as my limited legal knowledge goes, an email is not a legal form of cease and desist. (is it?). Would my client not need to receive physical, written cease and desist letter? So, is this just a case of a jealous competitor trying to foil our attempts at doing business online or does this US competitor really have a case against my UK client? Look forward to any advice/views on how to deal with this. (of course , consulting a lawyer is a given, but before doing that I wanted to get some opinions from some of the digital point members as in the past there has always been some good advice offered) Thanks.
You do need to get proper legal advice on this however, as soon as I read that, they just blowing hot air; if they had a real case against you, they will not be tweeting about it!