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Business Copyright Basics Protecting and Sharing Your Work How to Register Your Copyright

aliakbar sultani
aliakbar sultani
1,313 Points
Posted by aliakbar sultani
aliakbar sultani
1,313 Points

How do you price that you created the work first and it's yours?

Let's say I created a website and showed it to my friend, then he copied it and some time later he claims that he created it first. In this case how would you prove it to the court that it is your work?

1 Answer

Max Senden
Max Senden
23,177 Points
Max Senden
Max Senden
23,177 Points

First of, consider if it's even worth to take your friend to court. Chances are you'll lose a lot more money then there is for you to gain.

But lets assume you want to continue with taking this person to court. The first thing you need to do is compare your original code with theirs. If there's a huge overlap not just in the code but also in how it was written (e.g. use of white lines, tabs, etc) you might have a slim chance. As long as you can proof you wrote it first. To do so you can use your original files (which should have a creation date in the file itself), or as something like the 'internet archive: wayback machine' (google it if you are not familiar with it). Next its also up to you to come up with a good argument why this theft has affected you so much that you're willing to take this person to court for it (did you miss out on a project? was this code very special? etc)

But again: unless this theft has cost you a minimum of tens of thousands of dollars my advice would be to just suck it up and let it be. It's not nice to let a person get away with this but unless you have more than enough money to persue this person it's better left untouched.