Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Except in two cases. The first is when little children play that game in which they repeat everything you say in your exact, increasingly impatient, tone of voice. The second is in business, when it is sometimes actually illegal and always ‘just not cricket’.
The first case is the easiest to deal with and I would recommend the following technique: commandeer another child, let’s call that child, child Beta; the ideal candidate will be young enough not to understand the copying game but old enough to understand the fun of physcial violence. When the imitating child, let’s call her Child Alpha, starts imitating you, play along for a bit, then throw in a sentence like ‘Oi, Beta, please will you kick me very hard on the bum?’ Child Alpha will repeat this in a loud crowing voice, Child Beta will kick Child Alpha very hard on the bum, Child Alpha will yelp and retaliate, all hell will ensue and you will have to wade in to stop warfare – but you will have broken the spell of the now long-forgotten game.
The second case is trickier and to be honest, we would like some advice. We have been alerted (thank you, Nudo supporters out there, we owe you) to several cases of the most astonishingly blatant Nudo rip-offs. The olive tree adoption idea has of course, been multiply copied – but that’s to be expected – and we obviously didn’t invent the concept of adoption itself. But whole swathes of our text copied word for word from our website to another site selling olive oil, or our Nudo olive tree (lovingly created over many hours of painstaking labour by my sister) copied pixel for pixel to someone else’s olive oil bottle label! I mean that’s not on is it?
So this is a plea. Firstly, to your copycats out there, if you’re reading this and scouring for future ideas, please don’t do it! If you want our help, ask us, we will almost certainly give it. But not this way. The second is to you Nudo-ites out there: what is the solution for business copiers equivalent to the one for dealing with children above? Elegant, not pious, simple, not too precious, a bit messy and utterly successful?
Over to y’all.
as food /director of two catering establishment in new york i feel your product is heads above all. Frank Amantia
You might want to check with your country’s laws regarding copyrights, trademarks, etc., to see if there is any protection you have against such a thing. It is tough especially if the copy cats are in another country. If they are in Europe also, there may be some laws that overall govern such a thing.
Other than sending them a polite message that you are on to them, I don’t know what else you could do without a legal consultation.
You might want to check to see if you can cover yourself with some sort of ownership claim or statement on your website.
Good luck and keep us informed…your fans, fellow bloggers and good customers can help ward off the phonies and keep your good name!
Crummy! I know very well how much work goes into creating and running a small business, and the blatant stealing of ideas is in such bad form that it’s hard to believe. Having said that, I would think that your alerting customers/fans will be as effective (or more so) than pursuing legal recourse to put a stop to it. Plus much less expensive! Best of luck!