We always encourage our clients only to use their own images / photos but it appears other website designers dont give the same help and advice as some of our more popular website’s owners have received emails alerting them that their photos have been lifted from their website and added to a competitor’s website. If you get a similar email to the one below, you need to know the company is a startup trying to profit from people’s ignorance at copyright law and you are within your legal rights to claim compensation against the infringement separate to the company telling you about the copied photos.
We have identified a number of copyright issues / infringements against you and your business and it does appear that other businesses are trying to pass your work off as theirs.
We are a full service marketing agency working with from small start-ups to PLC’s and part of our role is to protect their brand and copyright. To this end we have developed a significant legal framework along with staff and software to complete this time consuming role.
We have all the processes in place to bring companies to account that are breaching your copyright, and once successful, we would be returning a significant percentage of the royalty payments to you and getting the offending images removed from the various companies websites.
There are at least 10 breaches of your copyright which would equate to you receiving approximately £4500 after our recovery costs. We can confirm there are NO upfront fees to be paid by you and you will not make a payment to us. Ever. Rest assured when instructed we would do a full investigation of all your images to see how many other breaches are involved and what other royalties are potentially payable. Typically when we find a breach there are generally other images which have been copied too.
I have attached the evidence which clearly demonstrates your images being used on other companies’ websites.
If you have a couple of minutes spare, you could take a look at a small animated clip we have produced on our homepage.
If you have any queries please feel free to contact me via email. If I am unavailable then please leave a message and I will get back to you as soon as possible otherwise I will give you a follow up call later on in the week.
[Angry Website Designers] If you don’t own these photos, where did they come from as its pretty illegal to use other people’s photos, I cant find them on other stock image libraries, we could purchase new / similar photos for the new site.
