Open Association of Landscape Industries
Protecting your copyright
Garden design is a creative business and there are always people ready to claim the work of talented individuals as their own.
In our many years as garden designers and landscapers we have had the public steal from us on occasions, but sadly, other landscapers and designers have done the same.
I don’t just mean plants, paving slabs and machinery, although this sort of theft was a continual problem; I am referring to our intellectual copyright on drawings, planting lists, brochures and other promotional material.
Drawings have been stolen from our display in the office, to reappear as completed local gardens; photographs disappeared every week, presumably for similar purposes. Landscapers have guided their clients around our demonstration gardens to finalise their sales.
With the growth of the internet it is even easier your competitors to steal from you and much harder to protect your hard earned reputation. If you post photographs of your work they may end up on the web site of another landscaper. Your Terms and Conditions, perhaps written by costly professional advisers, could well go the same way.
Here’s an amusing exercise I recently tried and you might like to do the same: type into Google a part of the text from your web site or brochure, or the file name of a photograph you have posted somewhere and hit the “search” button. The cover of our brochure, written by me with a little assistance from a copy-writer and used in a couple of our web sites in two languages, says this:
“Just Imagine...
A garden bursting with life - a celebration of your home and a credit to your neighbourhood.
A place of glorious calm after a hard days' work, secluded from the trials of everyday life.
A spacious, sunny enclosure for fun and recreation with family and friends.
An outdoor room affording space in the fresh air for when you'd rather be outside than in.
A garden can be all these things and more.
Simply point us in the right direction and we'll make it happen.”
Type this into Google and amazingly it points, not to one of my sites, but to that of Gardening Express .co.uk, who have copied my text verbatim to sell garden design on their own site. Flattering, of course, and if you have little talent as a writer and can’t afford to employ someone who has, you may feel this is a good option. Unfortunately, there is the little matter of intellectual copyright to consider. This text is my property and cannot legally be used by others without my consent.
I’d be interested to hear the experiences of other members.
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Chris Bonnett on
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if i ever get a few spare hours, I could do that maybe! This will be a good case study. I'm happy to let common sense prevail in this case.
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Permalink Reply by Colin Elliott on -
Still no email from Chris himself.....and I assure you there is no problems with my email system.
I did email: natalie@GardeningExpress.co.uk at 10.35 this morning and had a reply from the lovely Natalie at 13.02
Hi there,
Thanks for your email. Chris has informed me that he is dealing with your query personally and so I have forwarded your email to him.
If you have any further enquiries then please do not hesitate to contact me
Kind regards
Natalie @ Gardening Express
I am not sure how many times I have to repeat the text which is causing such offense at this end, but it was repeated in the email to Natalie this morning and I gather you have a copy. As for the landscaper, I have not seen his name yet, only initials, but to be frank, it is the owner of the web site I am addressing.Gardening Express may well have paid for material lifted from my brochure, but the copyright still rests with me. Common sense would suggest Gardening Express spend ten minutes writing text to replace my own, so we can all get on with running our businesses.
Just to reassure you (Chris) though, I do not recognise any of the photographs on your web site as mine, just the text.
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Here's the email I've received from Colin:
Hi,
**************** gave me this email address, something I have been trying to obtain for some while.
I have informed Chris Bonnett that the following text, written by me, is to be found on your web site and I would like you to remove it without further delay:
“Imagine...
A garden bursting with life - a celebration of your home and a credit to your neighbourhood.
A place of glorious calm after a hard days' work, secluded from the trials of everyday life.
A spacious, sunny enclosure for fun and recreation with family and friends.
An outdoor room affording space in the fresh air for when you'd rather be outside than in.
A garden can be all these things and more.
Simply point us in the right direction and we'll make it happen.”
I await your apology and confirmation that this has been done.
Colin Elliott
45 rue de Varennes
36210 Chabris
France
0033 254 40 15 42
Email: colin@garden-design.co.uk
Blog: http://gardendesigncompany.wordpress.com
and here's my reply:
Hi,
Thanks for your message.
As advised on Landscape Juice forum, in order to remove this permanently we will require you to provide us the relevant documentation now to assert your ownership. We go through rigorous procedures to protect copy such as this that is produced for us, and I am also contacting the person that produced this copy too about the matter. Do you know him?
It’s a shame that you did not reply directly to my message sent on 18th December on Facebook in response to your initial communication, as this would have avoided all of this. I am sure you can appreciate from our perspective we are the rightful owners of this and have parted with good money for it, so will now need the evidence to your ownership. However, I can see you are very passionate about this, and it is perhaps us that has been wrong-footed, I am a reasonable person, so I am going to remove the links to it right now from our homepage as a gesture of good will, until the situation is clarified. If you can provide this evidence within the next 10 days please, else I will have to re-instate as is. At this point I will be taking this to our solicitors to verify that it is legally yours, and I will obviously be taking matters further with the provider of this copy if they find in your favour. I will at that point edit it on our site which I know is what you are looking for.
Kind Regards
Chris Bonnett
Gardening Express
Mashbury Rd
Chignal St James
Chelmsford
CM1 4UA
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As you can all see, I've removed this from the site pending Colins evidence. I can't just take something I've paid for down on some ones say so, that I do not even know, but judging from Colins passion, it does point towards me being wrong footed, which I will be taking up in due course once I have the evidence from Colin to do so. Never any malace involved here, just want to go through the formalities now. This is pretty minor in a sense, but a good case study for us all, and practice for us if ever someone (direct competitor) decides to clone our site or something... lets all be friends!
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UPDATE:
Reply from Colin:
Thank you for yours.
Had you just removed the copy as every other site I have contacted over the years has done, there would have been a very rapid and happy ending to all of this ages ago. I am pleased you have at least given me the benefit of the doubt and removed the text, however temporarily.
The reason I have continued to pursue this issue publically is that you are so difficult to contact except from behind Facebook Walls and Twitter accounts: not the way I like to do business.
Given your tone I want a record of our conversations for my own protection, something I cannot have over an international telephone call….and I notice that your comments on Facebook are no longer available to me…..which seems to prove my point.
You seem to feel everyone is out to get you and jealous of your accomplishments – I am not one of those, indeed at one point I hoped to do business with you. In that this is our first email exchange, I have no idea what landscaper you are talking about, whether I know him and if he is the source of the misappropriated text. By all means let me know who he is, but I shall not be contacting him.
As for evidence, I have read what you feel is normal in your post on Landscape Juice and can confirm I did not send myself a sealed, recorded letter with the text hidden inside. However, as the author of the text in question I have communications with the designer and the printer of the brochure and original production files in boxes in the loft somewhere; my web site host also has copies of the web page which carried the original text and presumably the date the site was added. I imagine that between them this will satisfy most courts, should you choose to go down that route. I suggest you knock this on the head now and just rewrite the garden design paragraph on your site.
Really, life is too short for all this nonsense.
Regards,
Colin Elliott
45 rue de Varennes
36210 Chabris
France
0033 254 40 15 42
Email: colin@garden-design.co.uk
Blog: http://gardendesigncompany.wordpress.com
and my reply to him:
Hi Colin,
Please send me that evidence you have, and I will permanently remove/edit. Not a problem. From my end it appeared you decided to ignore my FB messages, and instead go through a public forum with an axe to grind, so I’m going to insist on this now. Please ask yourself how would you be feeling right now if someone you don’t know at all claims they owned content you had paid good money for? I would imagine you would not be very happy and also request some kind of proof?? I do not go to the time on trouble of protecting our content to just roll over on some ones say so, but of course I will listen to what someone has to say if they feel there is a problem. I do not feel this to be unreasonable. I sent you a message on facebook yesterday? And on the 18th, 19th December too. I have not blocked you! I like to conduct things in an open and transparent way, and social media is ideal for that. Look forward to hearing from you, then we will be fully resolved.
Chris
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PRO MemberPermalink Reply by Dan Frazer Gardening on -
Can I make an obvious point?
If everyone had to secure evidence they wrote everything that they write, the world would not function. The text in this post, for example, I would have to finish what I am writing, then document the fact that I wrote it, and store that evidence. Imagine!
Asking for solid proof that Colin wrote that text, when it is plain to tell from his communication and manner that he did, is unreasonable. Communication is not best done via lawyers and documents; it is done person to person. Let's not forget that.
The 'bigger picture' message that has already been mentioned is the underlying image you wish to project as a business.
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I've already removed as a gesture of goodwill based on Colins protest, which is very fair given that I paid some one to produce this. I'm not being pigheaded, I'm happy to admit that Colin appears to be correct in his protest, but it should also be recognised therefore that something a little more tangible should be provided, particularly where as a company we have parted with good money for copy. Yes - we may well have been wronged in that regard, but the correct rights owner should also be happy to help us seek redress if someone is going around using there works to all and sundry. It would be like me saying to Tesco you cant use the phrase "every little helps" because I put it in my calalogue 20 years ago.... take it down and say sorry..... what do you think they would say?
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Permalink Reply by Colin Elliott on
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I have just sent by email a scan of our brochure dating from 1999 showing the famous text.....80 odd words rather than a three word phrase from Tesco.....and we are still using it to this day.
Also attached is a copy of the original web page dating from March 1998, since replaced by what I like to think is an even better site, if a bit arty-farty, created by me in 2007. The two sites were: www.garden-design.co.uk and www.designandlandscapecentre.co.uk ; don't bother looking for the second one.....I dropped the site recently, but still have all the files with 1and1, my web site host.
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PRO MemberPermalink Reply by Graeme @ BGS on -
I'm now more than happy to add http://www.gardeningexpress.co.uk/ to my list of possible suppliers.
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Hi Colin,
Looks good, gives me everything I need to take the issue up elsewhere now. I am sorry about all of this, I hope you understand the stance I initially had to take. I didn’t like to do it like this, but felt I had to do things properly for the record since I had parted with cash for this.
kindest regards
Chris
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Graeme, I am going to speak to Phil about setting up a special discount perhaps or offers for Landscape Juice members... :-)
Chris
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PRO MemberPermalink Reply by Graeme @ BGS on -
Chris - That's sounds wonderful - good on you and I am sure you will be well supported.
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