Forums: Discussions for entrepreneurs and small business.

On my website I created a number of .jpg images of my products from original .pdfs (My product is to retrieve a document ffom various Sec of States) Here is an example: Now I have found a competitor of mine who has taken about 30 of my document images and used them to sell the same product on his smarmy website!!! I have two qusetions: 1. If I embed my logo in the images (To prevent further unauthorized use) will the new .jpgs I create lose the present Google ranking in the image search? (Right now they pop up first with my present image name in a search. 2. Do I have any effective recourse against the slimy web owner?... I tried to email the webmaster address listed in the domain registration and is bounced back...

Hi,

If you name the new images the same (file name) as the old ones google results should not be affected.

One question I have... are the images truely yours. I know you created them, but if they are pdf's of public records I'm not sure you have copyright protection of them.

You certainly could and should add your logo or something that shows that your produced them and maybe even have your URL on the image.

How are these images being "stolen"? Is the person/website "hotlinking" to them? or just copied the image from your web site, saved it and use it on their web site?

There are some techniques to hinder hotlinking. But you can not prevent people from copying any image from your web site.

~Roland