When Somebody Copies your content What should you do?

[johnshearer]

I wrote an article in 2011 A Brief History of Benjamin Moore Paint on my website ( I am a painting contractor). It is a content creators win; sited as an authoritative article on wikipedia.

Benjamin Moore Paint company has copied my content on their own corporate website; a deep page. Is this hurting, helping, or neutral?

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[EGOL]

If it is an exact copy of your article then it is possible that it could cause a problem with Google.

If you decide to contact them find out in advance if they are a real Benjamin Moore company.  If they are then your chances of success are greater, in my opinion.  If they are not I think it would be hard to get cooperation.

Decide what you want to accomplish.  Do you want it removed, do you want a link, do you want an rel=canonical?

I would want the rel=canonical AND have my company name listed as the author and copyright holder in the article.

I would offer them a choice.... A) remove the article..... B) display it with attribution and rel=canonical (and give instructions for how that should be done)

If they choose B then their web dev could get in touch if there are questions about how to do what you want.

[johnshearer]

EGOL,

Great insights; thank you. Should I take action? Is this polish site duplication harming my website in the eyes of Google?

The site is in English on my browser.  I assumed the site is endorsed by Benjamin Moore but now I am thinking this was an incorrect analysis.

[johnshearer]

I know the content is mine because I wrote it. I do recognize that in the new world I need to take steps to protect my copyrights.

[EGOL]

The site that has a copy of your work is in Polish.   It is on a .pl domain.

So, is it an offical Benjamin Moore site?

Another question is....  What copyright law applies when a USA author is infringed upon by a Polish company?  Do you have any status there?

So, Robert's advice to "be nice" might be more important here than it would be if you are contacting a US company.  If you have no status they can rip your work and use it as they please.

I also see that the site was built by a third party company.  Lots of web developers in the USA infringe out of ignorance and that is what might have happened on the Polish Benjamin Moore domain.  They might have told the developer.. ."build us a site" and he outsourced to a person who works even below the Polish wage base.

[johnshearer]

Hi Robert,

Thank you for your response. I assume you are suggesting that I file a complaint because the duplicate content is hurting my website rank? I am usually nice but thanks for the reminder. My page ranks higher then the manufacturers page for the copy.

I did not use Google authorship in March 2011; is it worth while to establish it now for that article?

[RobertFisher]

John

First, you can file a DMCA complaint with Google from Google support. I would suggest you need to be very sure this was your original content. I would also check it with Copyscape, etc. If it is yours, and you are a dealer of their paints, I would first contact them. Typically, you would contact the webmaster after doing a whois lookup. In your case I would assume you have contacts at the company. 
The words of Patrick Swayze in his rules to bouncers ring true here, "Above all, be nice!" If you start out with, hey did you guys realize, or I did not realize you appreciated my marketing efforts so much, would you like to work together?, it is better than ringing someone up and calling them a thief.

If you copyrighted your piece that would be great. If not, did you set up authorship in Google? That is another clear timeline. Also, you should be careful to check their site in Archive.org for any similar content before yours. 
Again, no matter what, be nice. If, it turns out they had content similar to yours before yours was written and you approached nicely, they are less likely to tell you to take yours down.

Hope this helps.