QUESTION
What should I do if a friend stole my written, documented business plan and is using it as his own? In addition to my website.
Asked on May 12th, 2011 on Intellectual Property - Michigan
More details to this question:
Appx. a year an a half ago I created a website, a friend of mine was interested in being involved but did no work on it. He later purchased a domain, nearly identical to my own, took the business plan I let him look at and now has hired another web designer and is using my business plan to secure financing for himself. I can document all of this, with dates of domain registration, prove the creation of the business plan on my own computer, and have stored conversations between the two of us stating he is not to use my property without a written contract.
1 ANSWER
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Nancy J. Flint Attorney at Law, P.A.
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The facts you state may implicate copyright and trademark law. Your business plan is entitled to copyright protection regarding the creative portions that you authored. Facts cannot be protected under copyright, but a selection of facts and conclusions based on the facts could be protectible. However, before you enforce a copyright, you must register it with the United States Copyright Office. If you did not register the copyright before it was copied, you have already lost the right to ask for attorney's fees and "statutory" damages (damages that don't require proof of actual harm to you). If you have trademark rights in a term that he is using in his domain name, and he is offering goods/services that compete with yours, this could be trademark infringement and cyberpiracy. However there are a lot of facts to determine whether you have an actual case under either of these theories.
Answered on Apr 28th, 2012 at 1:04 PM