What are my rights after someone copied my publication?

[bzapf]

I publish a 4 page monthly publication in Florida and am moving forward with franchising. I had a call from someone in Georgia in August inquiring about it and saying what a great idea it was and that he would be interested in franchising or licensing should we get there. I told him a lot of details and said I would contact him at a later date.

I followed up with him the other day since we are moving forward with franchising and he said he just started a publication of his own. After checking into it he copied our EXACT publication, just different advertisers. He used everything exactly the same right down to his website and pricing structure.

We do have a registered trademark on the name but nothing else. It would be very easy for us to prove that copied from us especially since we had our conversation back in August.

Can he legally do this? Do I have legal recourse?

Any thoughts would be appreciated. Thanks.

Bill

 

[Mass_Shyster]

What you've described sounds like a textbook case of a copyright violation.

If it was published on the internet, you can file a DMCA take-down notice and have the material removed from his website. If it's not internet based, you will need to resort to traditional remedies (cease and desist letter, lawsuit).