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Help - Copyright infringement

Thread title: Help - Copyright infringement
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07-22-2006, 06:19 PM
#1
Bryan vD is offline Bryan vD
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  Old  Help - Copyright infringement

Hi,

I help run a site with a custom made mod for vbulletin. Because it was a custom mod and it was something that had not been made before we bought a copyright on it. The first thing we did was send an email to the site owner.


Dear Sir/Madam,

It has recently been brought to my attention that one of your sites,
TUTORIALTOMB.COM, has copyrighted material on It. The materials on the site
are in copyright Infringement, and under US LAW Digital Millennium Copyright
Act ("DMCA"), Pub. L. 105-304, The copyrighted material is not to be copied
or reproduced without permission. Also, Copyright protects original
authorship fixed in tangible form. 17 U.S.C sec. 102 , For works
transmitted online, the copyrightable authorship may consist of text,
artwork, music, audio visual material, (including any sounds), sound
recordings, etc.

17 U.S.C. sec. 102( a ) clearly states "Under U.S. law, copyright protection
subsists from the time the work Is fixed. COPYRIGHT REGISTRATION IS NOT
MANDATORY"

Your site is also under general copyright infringement for these purposes:

Methods within script "BATTLE.PHP" on your site is in copyright infringement
Clearly shown here (http://www.tutorialtomb.com/forumtemp/battle.php). The
script contained on this website performs and/or acts like one previously
copyrighted by a site in this network. The layouts of the script are similar
which are also copyrighted, as well as the functions are
copyrighted. Functions / Layouts copyrighted include but are not limited to,
Battle Nav, known as "BATTLE SYSTEM CONTROLS" on the defendants site, Submit
New Battle, known as "CREATE BATTLE" on the defendants site, "Preview Battle
, known as "SAME METHOD", "Submit Vote signature clickable", known as "SAME
METHOD", "STANDINGS", known as "SAME METHOD". All METHODS and / or LAYOUTS
for "SUBMIT VOTE", "SUBMIT BATTLE", "STANDINGS", "BOTS", and other sections
of the unique code and unique functions are copyrighted, that includes text
used which is protected under the DMCA as published, copyrighted text, and
ALL CANNOT BE REPRODUCTED WITHOUT PERMISSION..

Known to the US Copyright
office, the methods used to create this script were unique, that includes
but not limited to the submitting of signatures for battle and voting via a
php script.

All work on the domain NATIONALSIGLEAGUE.COM falls under these copyright
laws, which you have clearly broken. You have clearly reproduced sections of
the script "BATTLE SCRIPT" for VBULLETIN BULLETIN BOARD SYSTEM BY JELSOFT,
in PHP, which has a US filed COPYRIGHT. Under US LAW, The owner of the site
has a right to file Copyright Infringement reports against you AFTER you
have been Initially contacted. This email will serve as your contact.

Further action will be granted If you do not remove the copyrighted material
that Is Copyrighted 2005-2006 New-Line-Network and NationalSigLeague.com.

If you are under 18 years of age, Your parents will be held responsible for
receiving letters, phone calls, and/or other forms of contact from the US
Copyright Office and/or the court listed below.

Court of defendents
PALMER DISTRICT COURT
235 Sykes Street
Palmer, MA 01069

Sincerely,

Justin Johnson, Harvard Univerity Agent and Legal Department of sites
under the
New Line NETWORK.

E-mail dated this 21st day of July 2006.
After talking to the person who made the script, he has refused to remove or delete the script saying you cannot copyright the idea so we emails his webhost with the same information. After a few emails back and fourth the webhost replied.

[quote]
I have looked into this a little further and would have to disagree with
you. None of your php or html code has been used, and although the layouts
may be similar, they are not exact. All php and html was done from scratch
so, there is no infringement that I can see.

vBul and Invision are both forum software, use similar (but not exact)
layouts, technology, design, methods, text, etc. They are not infringing on
each other since the idea of forum software is not something that one can
copyright.

Austin
[quote]

Now the next step is to go after the server company, so we did. We got a reply..

In regards to the script, if it was recreated from scratch to produce the same functionality as yours, to my knowledge, that's perfectly legal. On the other hand, if he's using your code and you've got a registered copyright for it, you can file a claim for that. Everything else you described doesn't really have any substance.


Thank you,

Jay
Layered Technologies
Policy Enforcement Technician
Now that this point, we don't know what we can really do and we don't have the money to file a suit. So basically is there anything we can do to have either the site taken down or the script destroyed?

Thanks,
Bryan

07-22-2006, 06:42 PM
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Garyrae is offline Garyrae
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  Old

Unless you patented the idea, or you have sufficient proof it's using the script that you made... You haven't got a leg to stand on.

07-22-2006, 07:10 PM
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Bryan vD is offline Bryan vD
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  Old

Originally Posted by Indy
Unless you patented the idea, or you have sufficient proof it's using the script that you made... You haven't got a leg to stand on.
Are you able to patent web script? I've never really been too sure on that.

07-22-2006, 08:21 PM
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Joe is offline Joe
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  Old

Well, you can patent an idea which is what they are using. If you have put a copyright on the script itself then that only prevents them from not copying the code used. If they completely rewrote the script either based on the idea, or if they thought of the idea themselves a copyright cannot do much to protect you.

07-22-2006, 08:58 PM
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Bryan vD is offline Bryan vD
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  Old

Alright guys thanks for the help.

07-22-2006, 09:18 PM
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Zane is offline Zane
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  Old

you havent patented the idea, and most likely would get refused the patent if you tried anyway. If their coding is completely unique then they are within legal bounds.

07-23-2006, 01:49 AM
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StatisticZ is offline StatisticZ
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  Old

Yeah.. I dont think you have anything either. I mean if you study the code some more some how then maybe, but yeah I dont think you can copyright or patent an idea.

07-23-2006, 03:26 AM
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Dante is offline Dante
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  Old

In case anyone is interested...Software, which includes the code written to create the software itself, is usually copyrighted. Software can be patented, and it has been, but in general the US, most of Europe, India and other areas of the world resist granting patents for software.

You cannot patent an idea. Patents are only granted to things which have substance, so if you have an idea to build a machine which will turn a grape into an apple, you can't patent that idea...If you design this machine, the design can be patented. So can the machine itself. If the machine uses some never before seen function to make it work, that function itself can be patented.

Original software code is automatically copyrighted to the author, but enforcing this copyright is very difficult. Generally the only way you can successfully enforce a software copyright on code snippets is if you can show that the code itself has been directly copied.

07-23-2006, 01:42 PM
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DateinaDash is offline DateinaDash
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  Old

You can't copyright an idea (as said already in this thread) so there is nothing you can do....the fact they can't see your php source and others can't see yours, means the way in which they have been developed is different.

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