Is it illegal to use a note-card for your business that someone else wrote (Without permission)?

[Christine Fearne]

Hi Everyone!

 

Just a quick question.. I run a successful hunt group, and recently it was brought to my attention that another hunt group has been using a modified version of the "application" notecard that I had written.  The notecard is exactly the same and still shows that I created it, but they changed the information to their hunt group name instead of mine.

 

For example: [NH] Hunt application  was changed to [CB} Hunt Applicaiton  and the inside changed "Sincerely Christine Fearne" to "Sincerely (Other hunt group person)"

Although this is technically not a huge deal..it's kind of annoying and I don't really feel its ethical, especially since they did not ask my permission. Another issue is that if someone checks to see who created the notecard, my name will show up, and they may think I am part of that other hunt group.

 

Opinions? 

[Rolig Loon]

It probably is, but I think you'd have a hard time getting LL interested in chasing the other person down.  You seem to be dealing with a person who is either (1) not an imaginative writer or (2) an admirer of your superior prose.  Or maybe both.  In any case, now that her revised card has already been distributed, it's going to be next to impossible to retract it.  Maybe a friendly solution would be to offer her your writing services for a future hunt, gently suggesting that it it would be a lot less confusing to her customers and yours if you used different text.

 

[KarenMichelle Lane]

At a minimum it is totally unethical and a general violation of your Intellectual Property Rights.

The best thing to do is to contact the person violating your rights 1st to see if they will do the right thing and stop using your Hunt event language and write their own.

After this you can go to court in you local jurisdiction to obtain a Cease and Desist order regarding the plagiarism but the cost of this is seldom worth the outcome. If you do this, send the order to LL for impementation.

 

 

[Kei Niosaki]

If you handed the notecard out as full perms then no its not illegal an nothng can do about it . if it was no mod no transfer  then yes it might be illegal.