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.
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Now I'm really flattered and excited: Midas Touch Landscapes, a company based in Bushy, Hertfordshire, are also using our text on their web site!
I'm sorry to hear this Colin.
I don't think enough people realise that intellectual property should not be copied without permission.
There's an unwritten rule that is generally accepted where some content may be copied as long as it's not used for financial gain and the originator is attributed.
While working with another designer who has a street fronted office, we would occasionally see and hear landscapers with clients pointing at various photos in the window. They would be discussing what elements they might like in their garden. Cheeky. Can't stop them doing the same on the web, but right in front of you, within earshot!
In general however I don't think anyone works in total isolation and we all get inspiration from designs we see even if only subconsciously. But there is a difference between influence and total rip-off.
Have you contacted gardeningexpress.co.uk yet? Very poor show from them.
What about when a contractor who has built a garden for a designer, but who also promotes his own design and build services, displays pictures of the designer's finished garden on his own website, without crediting the designer, and without consulting the designer for their consent? Not something that endears a contractor to me!
its something thats near impossible to prevent but you could make it harder for people to steal photos from your site.
user a water mark programe or microsoft office with a little word art to put you web adress or company across the photos.
or
what i used to do was use a bill board i had made with company name and logo on and place it in the back ground when taking the picture (even harder for people to photo shop out), then take a couple with out for the portfolio
again its not full proof but will stop those cut n past people from just googling and grabing pics
There's Copyscape to check the internet.
@Dan,
If you look at their web site you will see they are not the easiest people to email, but I did talk to someone via their Facebook Page. They blamed their web site designer when I told them about it last......and the time before that a few years ago!
The internet has complaints about the lack of responsiveness of this company everywhere you look (Google offered me the search term "gardening express complaints" when I started to type in their name), so I imagine only the threat of legal action will have them remove the offending text.
Colin hit Gardening Express with an immediate take down notice of all relevant material, hit the Gardening Express ISP with a dmca and if matters are not sorted immediately sue Gardening Express...it's really simple, just kick butt. I've had over a 100 website owners take the piss over the years and I am far from pleasant these days...these people are just lazy scum.
I don't know who Gardening Express are but they sound like a bunch of amateur tossers who need to be taught a lesson...
It is pretty galling isn't it?
Years ago when we made more gates my cousin came across a company using our catalogue as a basis for his busines I phoned him up and gave the option of a licensing agreement where he paid me a commision on each gate made or to stop using our designs. His reply was well I will use someone elses' designs then, "good" I said as long as they are not ours.
We make products for one of our competitors to his designs, have done for some years, I had an email from an indian company offering to make our products for us and using my customers designs as an example of what they had made, even using my customers' web pages.
All in all it is a tricky area, particularly if you are creative, people do not understand the value of design, I have the greatest difficulty in convincing people that I need to be paid for scratching my head and thinking, which is why I try to move away from the bespoke to the standard product model.
With a service type of business, which design is, it is essential in my view to make it work as a product in its' own right, seperate from the resulting finished item or garden.
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