Our site was image scraped.

les succulent ducks

Hi

We are based in Dublin and have been selling online for two years. We have just found out that our site http://www.wholesaleweldingsupplies.ie has been image scraped.

What is scraped? Scaping means that php code can be executed on the source site and all images, descriptions and prices can be saved into an excel file. This file can then be uploaded to the new site in a matter of seconds.

What this means is that while we spent months uploading products to our site by going to the bother of emailing suppliers, getting costs, getting high quality images, someone has scraped our site and uploaded all our work in a matter of minutes!!

www.claretradesupplies.ie is the site that is using our images, description, prices. They are based in Ennis. They have deleted some images that had our watermark but you can see clearly that there is blatant copying of our images and description and even prices on nearly all the products. Even the categories have been copied......

For example: Take the following product on our page:

http://www.wholesaleweldingsupplies.ie/index.php?route=product/product&product_id=997

and compare it with their page for the same product

http://www.claretradesupplies.ie/arc-stick-welders/parweld-xti-160-mma-inverter-welder-with-free-helmet-electrodes-gloves.html

The image is ours, the description is copied, the price is the same. This is blatant copyright at its finest........ Can they get away with this?

Is there a law in Ireland to prevent this. I know there is a Law in America that prevents this and people have gone to jail and paid big fines for doing it but what about in Ireland.? Would a judge know what we were talking about if we brought the case to the courts?

Just want to make people aware of this. Not many people know about this kind of illegal activity and I think more and more of this kind of thing will be common practice for so called "Business People" to get an online business up and running in no time.

Will update you once we go further.....

Karl

Trojan

Seek legal advice from someone who does IP rights.

Squeeonline

They don't have an RBN visible on their website. You could probably contact someone about that and have the website taken down as it's a dot IE.

I have no experience with this though.

Good luck!

Squeeonline

Also this website might be useful for people who want to check if their content is being copied elsewhere.

http://copyscape.com/

mneylon

Squeeonline wrote: »

They don't have an RBN visible on their website. You could probably contact someone about that and have the website taken down as it's a dot IE.

I have no experience with this though.

Good luck!

Unless they are a limited company they aren't obliged to display their company number

mneylon

kmetelko wrote: »

www.claretradesupplies.ie is the site that is using our images, description, prices. They are based in Ennis. They have deleted some images that had our watermark but you can see clearly that there is blatant copying of our images and description and even prices on nearly all the products. Even the categories have been copied......

For example: Take the following product on our page:

http://www.wholesaleweldingsupplies.ie/index.php?route=product/product&product_id=997

and compare it with their page for the same product

http://www.claretradesupplies.ie/arc-stick-welders/parweld-xti-160-mma-inverter-welder-with-free-helmet-electrodes-gloves.html

The image is ours, the description is copied, the price is the same. This is blatant copyright at its finest........ Can they get away with this?

Is there a law in Ireland to prevent this. I know there is a Law in America that prevents this and people have gone to jail and paid big fines for doing it but what about in Ireland.? Would a judge know what we were talking about if we brought the case to the courts?

Get on to your solicitor and let them handle it.

You don't need or want to go to court. A simple solicitor's letter should suffice.

Marty_McFly

Looks like you got it sorted.