#290 - What to Do When Someone Steals Your Content (My Step-by-Step)

So someone just freaking copied me, ripped me off. So blatant. And this is not a, oh, maybe they were just being inspired by. This was a literal swipe, copy, paste. And because I know I am not alone in this situation and how frustrating it is, I wanted to record this episode to walk you through exactly what I did about it, what worked, what didn't, and what happened in the end. Alrighty, let's dive on in. Hey, hey guys, it is Kate here from hellofunnels.co, and welcome back to a slightly different than normal episode of the Doing It Online podcast, because today I am rolling up my sleeves, uh, peeling back the curtains, whatever metaphor you want to use, and I am going to talk to you about a recent situation that came up in my business where someone literally copied me. Not one of those scammers who scrape it and sell it. I've had that happen plenty of times too. You know, this is a different situation. So I'm going to walk you through it. I'm going to walk you through what happened, what I did about it, what they did about it, and how it all kind of shook out in the end. And I kind of wanted to just chat about it because it's really, really frustrating and it can make you feel really powerless. Particularly in this online world. So yeah, let's dive on in. Now, before we get into my copying incident, I actually wanted to share a story with you guys, a bit of backstory, which is going to all make sense because I've been on the other side of this where I inadvertently got accused of copying somebody. Very, very different situation, but basically this was about 5 years ago now, and I got this truly terrifying legal letter, uh, via email saying that this person, this competitor, not someone I knew, never worked with them, never purchased anything of theirs, funnily enough. But they were saying that, you know, they were also teaching very similar things to me, and they were saying that I had stolen the contents of one of their courses and was selling it as my own, which was fundamentally not true. And this freaked me out. They sent me such a telltale sign, and they were trying to sue me for millions of dollars. They were saying that basically any money that I'd ever earned, I had to give to them. And then all these lost earnings and reputational branding, all of this stuff. And it was just total legal jargon gobbledygook, right? It was like word salad. I had no idea what any of it meant, other than the fact I knew that I definitely hadn't done it at all. And I'd like, it was, it was terrifying. So I had to go and get my own US-based lawyer. I'm in Australia, um, because this person was in the US and pay them thousands of dollars as a retainer to get them to go and fight this for me. And it was dragged out over several months, back and forth, back and forth. And basically the crux of it was that my lawyer was going back and saying, can you please actually tell us what you think my client has done? And can you please tell us what proof you have she has done anything. And I said, back and forth, back and forth, thousands of dollars just being set on fire, so many sleepless nights. And they finally came back in the end and said, well, look, we don't have any proof that she actually has done any of this. The only thing is that their client had noticed that in one of my ads, I'd used a word, a single word, that she actually had copyrighted or copywritten, whatever you say. Um, and this is a really, really standard marketing word. Okay. And so from that, they'd spun out this whole massive thing. And the end of the day, they said, oh, look, we'll, we'll get, you know, we'll cancel all this, get rid of this whole thing. If you just remove this one word from your ads. And it was just in a caption, like it was just like a throwaway kind of thing. And I happily did that. I was like, yes, of course, that is so not a problem. More than happy to do that. Didn't realize that was your word. There's plenty of other words I can use to say the same thing. Done. No worries. And to be honest, that whole situation kind of scarred me because that was so stressful and so expensive. I would imagine on both sides. Um, I don't know like who this lawyer was because I assume they saw the ad, went to their lawyer, said, I want something to be done about this, and this lawyer obviously has encouraged um, what's my assumption, to, you know, completely blow it out of the water. But, you know, that whole thing, that could have simply been a DM, right? Like, they could have sent me a DM going, hey, I noticed that you're using this word in your ads. I don't know if you know, I have a product using that word. Can you please change it? And it would have been done in seconds, right? Like, I'm a small business owner, they're a small business owner. I'm not out here trying to get anybody I'm happy to accommodate stuff like that. You know, total mistake, didn't know, happy to change it. You know, that would be, I would assume, the normal human response, but apparently not. So having been on that side of that thing, right, I just the other week had a similar thing happen to me. Although by saying similar, it wasn't a single word, it was literally my ad. Like, they had the first, you know, the hook exactly the same wording. I think instead of saying 60 seconds, it said 1 minute, but that was it. Very similar fonts. Like, they weren't technically the same font, but most people wouldn't be able to tell the difference. Same colors, same styling. The font was placed in the same place. The kind of B-roll I used behind it was the same kind of B-roll, but it was of them rather than me. The second scene was basically the same second scene. The text was pretty much identical. Then it went through a demo. So it was a demo of their product rather than my product. But then there were multiple other scenes, like the sort of like the pacing of it, the structure of the storyboarding of it was the same. And there are these other scenes, um, in their ad that were, I said, like the same, the same wording, but they just changed the video slightly. So. One of the scenes in my ad, there is a dancing robot. I'm sure a lot of you guys have seen this. We've been running this ad for a while. It's been super successful for us. There's like a dancing robot and on the screen it says, and now for the really fun part, right? And they had a picture of a dance. It was a dancing woman and it says, and now for the really fun part. And then there's another scene where it's like scrolling through sales notifications and it says, and it just freaking works. And then there's GIF, animated GIF on it with someone doing like the make it rain, like shooting the money in the air. So they had obviously their own sales notifications and a slightly different GIF of someone shooting money in the air and it's still the exact same thing and it freaking works. And there was multiple instances of this where it was just like, this wasn't a case of them seeing something and going, hey, that's cool, I'm going to try and make it work for me or make my own version of it, which we all do, right? We all screenshot stuff and save stuff. I'm like, girl, that's a cool idea. This wasn't like close to line. This was no, I'm— they pretty much copied me, right? And having had that same previous experience before, I was sitting there after I'd just broken my foot. So I was like, well, I wasn't in the best of moods anyway, but I thought, no, no, no, I'll sit on this. Like my first reaction was really annoyed. I wanted to like leave like a nasty comment below their ad. I was like, no, no, no. High road, Kate, don't do that. So I sat on it and I was tossing back and forth, like, should I just ignore it? Like, obviously, as I said, people are copying people all the time. And then I kind of thought about it logically, and I would encourage you guys as well, if this ever happens, to think about it before you make a decision on whether you do anything. Is this actually going to impact my business? Because if it is, then it is worthwhile pursuing and trying to get something rectified, right? If it's not, if it's just going to be annoying to you, then maybe you do just leave it. Maybe it's not worth the hassle and the stress, right? But for me, like, the more I thought about it, I just kept seeing this ad kept getting served to me, right, as well. Now that I'd seen it once, I was getting served so many times. And the problem was it was so similar. And not just that the content was similar, the product they were selling is similar. So my product is an AI-based content creation system. Their product was an AI-based content creation system. Theirs was specifically to carousels. Mine does all content, but, you know, close enough, right? Um, and we had the exact same targeting. Like, we'd be, would be out there basically directly competing with each other. And the other thing is, what, from what I know about how ads work, is I know that the ads would be like, hey, these things are really similar. So if you're seeing my ad, you're probably seeing their ad, and that's confusing. And that also impacts how my ad is going to do. And my ad was doing super well. And do you know what? It started to do less well. And when I opened up their Facebook ads library, literally I could see the correlation, the date they started launch— they launched this ad and they were going heavy on this ad because they'd done 20 variations of it. They had 20 different variations of it that was using the exact same content. And so I knew that they were putting a lot of budget behind this. So I knew that absolutely people were seeing their ad, they were seeing my ad, it was causing issues, it was reducing the effectiveness of my ad, which, you know, I put a lot of time into, I was really proud of. And the other thing I went and looked at was, you know, who, like, who is this person? I'd never really heard of them before, but I thought if they're just, again, if they're like a beginner business who doesn't really have much of a following, doesn't really have much of a budget, Obviously it's probably not worth doing anything about, anything other than maybe like shooting them a quick DM, just sort of telling them that, hey, by the way, it's not cool. But I went and looked them up and they're a really big account. They've got 156,000 followers. And, you know, according to the income reports that they're sharing, they are making multiple hundreds of thousands of dollars off their low-ticket offers every month. So I'm like, no, no, this is actually this is actually a problem. So morally, it's a problem because I'm a bit of a social justice person. And I think when people do stuff like this, like rip people off, like act outside of integrity, it just really, really bothers me. So, you know, I had that part of it. And, you know, secondly, and more importantly, is it was, this is like actually a business decision. Like this was, I had to do something because I had to protect my business. So The decision was made. And because of my previous experience where I had been on the other side of this, I always, I sort of went into it with the assumption of giving that person a bit of reasonable doubt, a bit of like, okay, maybe they didn't realize just quite how close to the line they'd gone. Maybe they strayed over it a little accidentally. Maybe someone on their team did it. They didn't know. So first thing I did was I decided to just reach out to them. I sent them a DM and I sent them an email and it was all very friendly. It was just like, hey, I've noticed this, that you're running an ad which is beyond similar. Of course, I got ChatGPT to help me script it out so it sounded all proper. I was like, this isn't just inspiration, this is very similar. We have similar products, similar audience. It's going to be confusing. It's going to be impacting the performance of both of our ads, and I need you to take it down. I gave them a deadline. I was really clear. I said the ad needs to be taken down within 48 hours, otherwise further actions will be taken. And I also specified in a couple of bullet points the parts of the ads that needed to be removed if they relaunched new ads, namely being like the bits that were direct copies, right? Because I can't come out and say, no, you can't do an ad that's anything like this ever again. I said, take inspiration, that's fine, just don't copy me so closely that my own clients can't tell if it's my ad or your ad, right? So that was the first thing I did. And then I waited. And then they came back and played dumb. They're like, oh, we don't know what ad you mean, could you let us know? Which was a little infuriating to start off with. So I sent them the link, I reminded them of the deadline, they came back again and were just denied it. They said, no, we, sorry, independently created this ad ourselves, sorry if it's similar, you know, They tried to make it seem like it was all some big mistake, didn't take any ownership of it at all, which was so frustrating because all they needed to do was say, oh, whoops, sorry, we really liked your ad, but yes, maybe it is probably a bit too similar now you mention it. We're going to take it down, you know, and we'll create something else. Like, that would have been the right thing to do in their case, but they didn't. They denied it. The next thing I did was make sure that it was very clear that it had been copied, you know, that what my point was. So I created a PDF which had literal screenshots of my ad and their ad side by side, section by section of the bits that were direct copies. And there were about 8 different elements that were directly copied. Quick description of what each piece was, why it was exactly the same. Then when my ads were launched, which was December last year, when their ads launched, which was March 12th this year. I sent that back to them, said you have a further 24 hours to take this down. Otherwise, you know, I said further steps will be taken. I was a little vague on what the further steps were because I was still researching what they were going to be. And again, I just gave them a bullet point. If you are going to relaunch ads, you can, of course, but you just need to remove this screen, this screen, this screen, this screen, because they are the ones that are exactly the same as mine. and so then what happened was they stopped communicating with me and they blocked me. Like, they blocked my account on their social profiles everywhere. I think they did that so I couldn't see their ads. I don't know if they've realized that you can just go into Meta Ads Library and see the ads. And then they did eventually take that specific ad down, and then they relaunched about another 8 versions of it. Which was slightly more dissimilar, right? Like they changed 2 words instead of 1. They removed one of the copied elements, kept the others, and oh, it was just frustrating, right? And I knew I was not gonna get any further with like this type of person has no integrity and they don't care. And then the other side of the world, I think they're based in Germany, right? And I went and looked at their ads account And the other thing which became very clear was this wasn't just my ads they were copying. Every single one of their ads was a direct ripoff. I was seeing Maria Wentz ads again, like word for word. Even one of them, like Maria Wentz had like her very first like ads that really took off. She had like those 24 courses for $24. She still runs them. It's like a single image. It's got the screenshots of the 24 courses. It says 24 courses, $24. She has an ad exactly like that. Evelyn Weiss, um, she's ripped off her as well. She has a PLR product which the ads are exactly the same as Evelyn Weiss's product. So I was like, okay, so this person is just scum, right? They're just a scumbag. They don't have any originality, nothing of their own. They're just very good at finding people who are doing something well and copying them. And they were doing— obviously it's being very successful for them. But yeah, this is annoying me even further. So the next steps I took So after reaching out, being very civil, being very reasonable, and being denied, the next steps I took was I went and actually reported them to Meta. So not just like clicking report ad, although I did a couple of those as well, but they don't really do anything. Meta actually has an IP infringement department. So you can actually Google Meta IP infringements and you can submit an IP infringement and you have to kind of document it out. Unfortunately, I couldn't provide my lovely little PDF, which had the screen by screens next do it. Um, and interestingly, I, cause I did it twice though, cause you can do it for each platform. I submitted the one for Facebook and I submitted one for Instagram and one was, uh, approved and one was denied. So obviously it comes down to who it gets sent through to, but that was good. Um, although the ad they had at this point already actually deactivated that particular ad. So it didn't actually help me any, but it's just a good thing to know if you do find yourself in that position where you're getting directly copied. So then I came down to, okay, what am I— what further actions can I take? And what do I really want to get out of this? Like, I had to keep asking myself this because, you know, we can get all kind of tied up in the drama, we can get annoyed, we can get all righteous, and we can be all like, no, I must have justice. Um, but at the end of the day, it's about your peace, right? As just as much as it is about your profit. And so I decided to draw my drawing the line in the sand was I'm not going to pursue this further. I mean, like, legally now they had changed it enough that, you know, it would be not something could be legally could be anything done about it, right? They— it was now different enough. I think some people will still probably get confused by it, but it is what it is. Also, they're based in Germany, I believe. They are actually a not actually a German resident. I think they're originally from India or something, but they're based in Germany. I'm based in Australia. Trying to like do anything across countries is very difficult. It just pretty much doesn't happen. So there's no real like legal avenue there. So then it came down to the public avenue, the avenue of naming and shaming. And this was something that my team and I talked about because part of me was like, hell, this is going to be great content. The internet loves a public bitch fight, right? The going to get so many comments and views. I was like, no, no, no, but that's not really the kind of comments and views that I wanted. But I still couldn't really, I couldn't just do, again, feel like I was just doing nothing. Like this person is, they're just shady, right? They're acting out of integrity. They're deliberately doing stuff that is harming other people's businesses and they're profiting from it. And so I couldn't just do nothing. So I kind of came to a bit of a I don't know, happy-ish medium for me anyway is where we landed. And that was one, to record this podcast, um, because I just kind of wanted to get it all off my chest. And two is we are going to be posting a carousel with the side-by-sides of the ad, however, with the person's details fuzzed out. And the purpose of this, I mean, for me at least, is I hope that the people who follow me, the people who are in my world and community, if they see that they're going to then see— they'll be able to recognize the other ads when they come up, and then they'll just know, hey, that's— that person is a con artist. And they'll know that going forward. And hopefully they don't trust that person and waste any of their money with that person. I also did a bit of a Google side quest, did a bit of a Google of their reviews, and there's so many— like, they have Reddit threads dedicated to how they they rip people off, they don't give people what they purchased, all this kind of stuff. So this became the spot where I ended up landing. We did go back and forth a bit of whether we should just have the carousel screen so you could see the exact images, you could see that person directly. I decided against it. I feel like that's a bit too nasty and negative, and I don't really want to play down at their level, but I'm hoping that It will be clear enough that when you see it, you'll know to stay very far away from that person. And hopefully a bit of internet karma will come along and sort out the rest for me. So that's basically what I ended up doing. I approached them directly. I would say that most good people, a simple approach indirectly, like giving them the benefit of the doubt, is more than enough. They'll probably be super embarrassed. They'll do it— that they made the mistake in the first place. It'll get rectified really quickly. If they're not a good person, then they're going to double down. And then, you know, the real, like, levers that you have are one, you know, making sure that you're clear, you give them deadlines, you show that you are not going to be scared off. Two, exploring what official avenues you have. And on most platforms, there are some official avenues to help you deal with it. So definitely make sure you go down that path. And then the third lever that you have, because like legal is, unless they're in the same country as you, unless you're prepared to spend a lot of money, for most people is not an option. The third avenue is public, basically naming and shaming. And whether you wanna do that or not, I feel like comes as a personal decision, comes down to you and your brand. Definitely be careful the way you do it because you don't wanna have any blowback on you either. But you know, those are the avenues that we have in front of us. And hopefully if this has ever happened to you, or if this does happen to you in the future, hopefully this is helpful. Hopefully it doesn't happen to you. Uh, hopefully you are shielded from the scammers out there, but just know that these things do happen in business. I've been in business nearly 20 years. I'm surprised it hasn't happened sooner. And we try and make these decisions from a place of not the initial emotion, make it based on what outcome do I actually want to happen here? What are the impacts of what I'm going to do here? Is it worth my time, my energy, my stress, my peace? And then make your plan, execute, follow through. So anyway, guys, that's it. I hope this has been helpful, slightly longer episode than normal, but I wanted to share this experience with you guys. And yeah, next week we're back for more regular scheduled programming, back to funnels. And I've got a real goodie for you coming up. So I will see you all then. Bye.