Copyright Infringement

[emartin]

What is the name of your state?What is the name of your state? California

Hello. I need some advice

I am the creator of a online image gallery, coded in Perl (if it matters). I first released this software online in Feb 2003. It has been through a few different re-writes and I now have a free version and a paid version...the paid version has additional features.

So, about two months ago I noticed a new "competitor" and went to check out their site. I was pretty shocked to find that their software looked exactly like mine and had almost the identical functionality. After further investigating I realized that they copied one of my templates (HTML and CSS code) and even copied many of the images from my software.

I decided not to take action mainly because they were charging almost $50. I figured that no one would purchase it. However, last week they apparently lowered the price to $10 and one of their customers contacted me because he had seen both programs and wanted to know "who copied who". After further talking to this person I found out that the competitor denied basing his software on another and claimed that it was all original.

I obtained a copy of their code and they did "re-write" a lot of the actual Perl code, but it is apparent to me that it is very much based on my software. I do have a license agreement that can be found at:
http://www.emalbum.com/docs/standard/2.1/?page=license

Unless I don't understand my own license , by downloading my software, my competitor cannot redistribute it in any form without my permission. Even if he totally re-wrote the Perl code, wouldn't the template and images be considered redistribution?

Also, is there anything I can do about the "look and feel" and functionality being almost the same? I really don't know what to do...and I am unsure of the what to say to them...I'm not interested in a legal battle here.

You can view my software demo at:
http://www.emalbum.com/cgi-bin/emAlbum.cgi

If you'd like to see their demo, please PM me.

If you view the source, you can see that the image names, CSS and most of the HTML is the same. If you browse around the demo's you'll also see how similar the functionality is.

So...sorry for the long post...any ideas/suggestions/advice would be helpful. What are my choices?

Thanks,
Eric

 

[divgradcurl]

I really don't know what to do...and I am unsure of the what to say to them...I'm not interested in a legal battle here.

If you are not interested in legal action, then I don't know how we, or anyone else, can help you.

But just in general, if they copied "creative" parts of your code, or copied images, that mightbe copyright infringement. Copying "functional" parts of your code would very likely not be infringement. As far as "look and feel," the creative aspects (the "look") can be copyrighted, the functional aspects (the "feel," I guess) generally cannot be copyrighted. Basically, you cannot protect functionality via copyright -- that's what patents are for.

 

[emartin]

Thanks for your reponse.

I am interested in legal action but I wanted to find out what my options were or if I even had a "case". I'm sorry for my comment about not wanting a legal battle...I was just venting.

I think I will just send them a letter asking them to stop using my template design and images.