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We've developed our website for over 10 years. Recently a website in China has begun to pirate our images and product descriptions (they are showing "new" March offerings). Nearly all of the items they "offer" are ours.

Their whois leads to an outfit in France which by chance also hosts a website for steroids. Both the steroid and the pirate site share an 800 phone number (coincidence??). The pirate site lists "their" products as being available in mass quantities, though very often the actual product is one-of-a-kind.

The images they've stolen appear in Google searches alongside our own!! Clicking on any product at the pirate site leads to nowhere. Calls to the 800 number lead to a recorded answer. No reply to our emails (funny if they would have!). Any suggestions on what to do? Much obliged for any help.

https://www.collectiblereview[.]com (the pirates)

http://www.anabolic-store[.]com (steroids)

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  • Why did you give these pirates a link?
    – MrChrister
    Commented Mar 1, 2011 at 18:49
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    This happens within China as well. Browsing TaoBao (their eBay) reveals hundreds of stores using the same stock images for products. That's just the way it goes over here...
    – Drew
    Commented Mar 3, 2011 at 7:49

2 Answers 2

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Take screenshots for proof. Then write to the various parties involved the documents they require so the content can be removed. Focus on the plagiarism of your copyrighted content (uniqueness of products sold is your word against theirs).

  1. Send the site owners a cease and desist letter.

  2. Send their web host a DMCA takedown notice. This can be determined using whois.

  3. Send search engines a DMCA takedown notice according to their terms:

There are examples of how to write each of these documents on Plagiarism Today.

If this doesn't work then you'd need to call in the lawyers. Here's details of a particular case I just stumbled across on Chilling Effects. There's also more information about Cease & Desist there.

I would also set up Google Alerts which will e-mail you when it finds content matching your unique search terms.

The above is a summary of steps recommended in several posts on brentozar.com. While his posts are about stealing of blog content, most of it applies to your situation.

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Send a DMCA notice to Google. If the other party doesn't respond, and you can bet they won't, Google will remove them from their SERPs.

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