Software Copyright Issue - My work has been copied & is being resold online

stelydave

Hi,

Just wondering if anyone has advice on a copyright issue I have. For something I was working on at the time, I developed a spreadsheet a couple of years ago to do a particular task and it worked well, saving considerable amount of time.

I decided to polish up the spreadsheet and sell it for a fee online. It had been generating a modest return and I noticed that over the last few months sales have all but stopped.

On googling the search terms recently, I see a U.S. based website setup to sell my spreadsheet, with small cosmetic changes. The functionality is the same and much of the text I personally wrote is word for word in their product. I am also able to prove this as I paid a subcontractor to write some of the code.

Would anyone know the best way to effectively pursue this? There is no doubt as to the fact that it is a copy of my work, but I have no knowledge of international/software copyright laws.

Appreciate any advice,

Thanks very much.
SD

Reloc8

You need advice from a solicitor.

Before you go down that road (it won't be all that cheap for work of this nature and they may end up sending you to american based lawyers) you'd have to ask how much the software was generating for you (I'm not asking) and whether its worth the time, money and effort to pursue it.

I'm not belittling the obnoxious behaviour of ripping your work off, I'm just observing that proving its a rip-off and doing anything about it will likely not be cheap.