Background
Our high quality copyright coin, medal, & jewellery images are stolen on a daily basis by fellow dealers (competitors), bloggers, pseudo-expert & advice sites acting as eBay & Google portals, eBay & other auction site sellers.
Our websites contain some of the best numismatic photographs on the internet, and more of our images get illegally copied than any other dealers, featuring on hundreds of websites worldwide.
On our Coin Copyright Infringements by Abuser Category page we discuss the different categories of copyright thieves, together with a few of our more printable thoughts about them.
We have a name and shame policy for copyright thieves. These are currently listed on, and linked from, a number of pages, including Copyright Abuse Alphabetical , and eBay Copyright Thieves , but each of these pages is getting too long, and we will soon be splitting them into categorised sub-pages.

Copyright Notice Please see our "Copyright" page for further information.

Copyright Infringements Remedies Our suggested draft remedies for copyright abusers dependent on category - competitors, bloggers, pseudo-expert & advice sites acting as eBay & Google portals, eBay & other auction site sellers.

Other Copyright Abuse

Undertaking This links to our standard undertaking page. If you are a business please copy and paste this onto your headed paper. If you are an individual please put your name and address in the appropriate place.

Suggested Remedies We offer the suggested remedies without prejudice:

• Copyright Infringements by Direct Competitors - Coin & Bullion Dealers, Jewellers
  If you fall into this category, we consider you as in the worst class of offender.
  We suggest you remove all trace of our images or other copyright material from your websites or pages.
  Once you have done this, you should contact us in writing, and include:
  • Your full contact details.
  • The relevant images or other copyright material.
  • The relevant pages on your website(s).
  • A solemn undertaking not to re-offend. This should be in appropriate legal format and language. Consult a lawyer to help you draft the document if in any doubt.
  • An account of all sales and profits from the direct or indirect use of our images or other material.
  • A substantial offer of financial compensation.
  • A substantial payment on account, which you may wish to transfer direct to one of our bank accounts, details of which you can find on our About Us page..
  If we receive the above before we have contacted you, we will give more favourable consideration to your approach.
  Please note, this does not include any offer or commitment on our part to remove any or all of our Name & Shame pages. We pride our editorial integrity. If your approach and offer is genuine, and any correspondence is easy and cordial, we will give consideration to publishing a "pardon" on the relevant pages.
• Commercial Indirect Competitor Including Advertising Portals Disguised as Expert Advice Sites
  We consider you as a serious competitor, although not in quite the same class as a Direct Competitor.
  There are two obvious remedies, although a combination of the two may be appropriate
  1. Removal of all relevant material, and proceed to follow the suggestions for Direct Competitors, as above.
  2. Place a clear prominent credit and indexable link next to each and every copied image. Publish a clearly accessible and indexable apology and retraction page on your site. Allocate a prominent permanent advertising space for us on your site. Advise us fully of your actions.
• Private Vendors on eBay & Other Auction Sites
  We do consider you as a direct competitor. Although we welcome healthy competition, using our material in direct competition with us is unfair, and we do feel very strongly about it.
  You should follow our suggestions for Direct Competitors as in (1) above, although we would probably accept a simple written undertaking in place of a solemn declaration. We would suggest a compensation of 10% of the value of your item(s), with a minimum of £100.
• eBay & Other Auction Sites
  We remain sceptical about any expressed sincerity about your respect for IP rights. We believe eBay and most other similar auction or listing facility sites to be in implicit collusion with your members. We frequently notice your tardiness and apparent reluctance to remove reported material promptly if at all, and we believe you have inadequate pre-emptive filtering and quality control over your members and their listings.
  You should contact us with your suggested remedies, but bear (1 above) in mind.
• Private Non-Commercial Sites
  Including blogs, educational, collector, numismatic clubs, and advice sites.
  We welcome and encourage the use of our images on high quality, informative sites.
  Please ensure you place a clear credit and link near any and all images sourced directly or indirectly from our sites.
  Please advise us that you have done so, and include your full contact details. We do not expect any financial reward or compensation.
  This category is strictly for sites and pages which contain no paid advertising links.
  We will make an exception for high quality sites where a limited amount of sponsorship or other advertising helps to cover the costs of running a non-commercial site. If in any doubt please contact us.

Balance and Benefit
Where all benefit from the use of our images, there exists a win-win-win situation.
You site benefits from being able to use some of the best coin photographs on the internet.
We benefit because you give us a visible and indexable link.
Web users benefit from seeing our photos on your website, and being able to find our site for further specialist information.

All Rights Reserved We reserve all rights to change, cancel, or withdraw any and all of the above without notice, and entirely at our discretion.

Legal Action We intend to take legal action against any and all of these, but international lawyers and legal action tend to be quite expensive, although we would obviously seek to recover costs and damages from the guilty parties. Meanwhile we think that giving the individuals, companies and websites some free publicity is in the public interest, and also quicker, cheaper, and possibly more effective than litigation. There are now over 400 on our list. these include a few duplicates where the companies use different names, or the name of their website is different from the company.

Costs
As the cost of getting a copyright infringement case to court is likely to exceed £100,000 per case, we would need to budget more than £40 million for legal fees if we were to proceed with legal action against all the above at the same time.We have now invested considerable time, effort and expense in consulting specialist IP lawyers, receiving legal advice, and having draft "Cease & Desist - Notice Before Legal Action" letters prepared. As we added this comment, we had served these on over 5 parties to date, none of whom has responded favourably, one of whom (a British dealer) has received a further notice before action from our solicitors, and looks like it may run all the way to court. The other 4 (all non-UK) will all be receiving further communication direct from our solicitors. It looks as though we may have to appoint Swiss, Luxembourg, and US lawyers to help.
Our case against eBay should be particular fun.

Web Designers & Sub-Contractors It is not a valid defense to claim that your website was supplied or designed by a third party. Any competent business should ensure that its agents, service suppliers, or sub-contractors are reputable, honest, reliable, and check whether they have client liability insurance. If your website infringes copyright, you are responsible whether it was your own work or supplied independently. If the latter, then you have legal rights of redress from your supplier or sub-contractor, and you should take expert advice on taking legal against your supplier.

Errors & Omissions If you are named and shamed on any of our pages, and you believe any of our statements are inaccurate, please contact us with the suggested corrections, together with any supporting evidence, and we will review our page appropriately.

Other Legal Notes about Copyright & Defamation
Some of the parties "named and shamed" on our copyright or other pages react quite aggressively when they find our free advert about them on our websites.
Naturally, we resent this type of bully boy behaviour, which tends to reinforce our views that the copyright abusers are antisocial and dishonest. Counterattack seems to be the first line of defence for dishonest people.
Some challenge us to prove our ownership of the photographs, and more. We think this is particularly stupid of them, as to do so will require civil litigation, which is time consuming and expensive. As they are in the wrong, they will end up paying their own legal fees, our legal fees, and whatever compensation we are awarded. These cost will almost certainly amount to upwards of £200,000!
Some threaten us with legal action for abusing their copyright by including a screenshot of their pages. We regard these as evidential supporting our claim. In most cases, they make our case self-evident. They also amount to a statement of fact, and their publication is in the public interest, and they constitute fair comment and usage on the basis of criticism and review. We also naturally fully credit the source.
Any half-decent individual or company, when caught red-handed in such manner, would be far more conciliatory in their approach, and approach us with a suggested offer to compensate us, but then most decent professional people and companies would not have stolen our used our copyright images in the first place.

Copyright Abuse on eBay

Lara Jade Coton Awarded $130,000 in Damages for One Photograph
A friend forwarded us a link from theregister.co.uk about a young UK student and photographer who had one of her photos stolen by a Texas pornographer Robert Burge and his company TVX. It took three years, but a Florida court awarded a total of around $130,000; when we saw the article it looked as though Lara had not yet been paid, but we sure hope she gets a payout eventually.
It also gives us a target when looking for legal damages against the 500 or more companies and people stealing our photos on a daily and continuing basis.

Find More Items From the Same Seller. Bid or Buy Now! This eBay Cross-Promotion and Marketing feature causes similar problems.

Auctiva, eBay & Copyright Theft
We suggest you read this link if you use Auctiva.

Copyright Abuse by Coin & Bullion Dealers, Jewellers & Other Traders Original version, non-alphabetical.

Other Web Sites All comments about copyright also cover content of all our other websites including, but not limited to:-

• Chards
  www.chards.co.uk
• Investment Gold Bars & Coins (This Site)
  taxfreegold.co.uk
• General Coins & Jewellery:
  www.24carat.co.uk
• Gold Sovereigns:
  goldsovereigns.co.uk
• 18 Carat Gold Jewellery:
  www.18carat.co.uk
• 9 Carat Gold Jewellery:
  www.9carat.co.uk

  Innocent Infringement?