Litigation

It has been quite a week for intellectual property. Earlier this week in The Subtle Difference between Flattery and Plagiarism I discussed "plaintiff loyal settlement planner" Settlement Professionals, Inc. and its obvious plagiarism of a page from the 4structures.com, LLC website.

Today I uncovered "sludge" emanating from north of the border, Weblo.com, which came up on page 1 of a Google search for "4structures"  and falsely claimed that our domain "was still available"

• Download 4structures_google_search_results.pdf
• Download 4structures_com_google_search_results.pdf

For the record 4structures.com is registered through December 7, 2011 through Network Solutions. Regarding the rogue "boy scouts" I checked out the Whois records for weblo.com and contacted the company, which I learned  is a division of Ottawa, Canada based Allainet Corporation.

I discovered that these "pirates" are creating "an internet within the internet" using YOUR intellectual property, your registered trademarks, your copyrights, images that you have licensed from others for a specfic purpose. According to a representative of Weblo.com they create a virtual world where you can have a profile and send virtual traffic to your website. In other words others can profit off you without your authorization and your product or company goodwill can be associated with anything under the sun. The Weblo representative was surprised when I told them that their piracy is showing up on page 1 of the Google search results.

To avoid intellectual property theft It's a good business practice to search your own company or your name on the Internet. Over the past few years I have informed other settlement professionals and structured settlement companies when their good names or works have been used in unscrupulous ways.

Here are a selection of structured settlement, settlement planning or recovery management interests whose domain names are "still available" according to weblo.com

• Download weblonssta_com_available.pdf
• Download webloeps_settlements.pdf
• Download webloringler_associates.pdf
• Download weblo-sfa.pdf
• Download weblo-structuredsettlements.pdf
• Download weblojames_street.pdf
• Download webloforge_consulting.pdf
• Download weblohalpern_group.pdf

<-----Despite appearing on the "virtual world" of weblo and being falsely attributed to 4structures, the person in this image does not work for and is not associated with 4structures.com, LLC in any capacity.

The company is not associated with gastof-brunner, estrucad, thepianolounge.com, moyyataustin.com, tilajewlry.com

4structures.com, LLC does not tolerate unauthorized use of its intellectual property (i.e. theft) and takes affirmative steps to protect its intellectual property including but not limited to maintaining copyrights, registering trademarks and service marks, patents pending and , if necessary litigation to protect its rights. Anyone or any entity thinking of an easy way out through copying the works of others should be aware, for starters, of the US Copyright Act provision which provides for the TREBLING of damages in certain cases.