Copyright And Defending It

I've recently discovered someone is using my work for their portfolio. It's a small web design company that I used to have a relationship with. When we were working together, we signed a contract making me their agency of record, meaning that all creative work had to go through me (if I turned something down, someone else could be approached for that piece of work only). I thought it was appropriate to let them put my work in their portfolio, since effectively I and the freelancers I worked with were their creative department.

After hounding them for months for payments, and then discovering they had gone behind my back in violation of our agreement to hire other designers, including a full time junior designer, I cancelled our agreement and demanded they remove my work from their site.

Just last week out of curiousity I looked up their site again, and discovered it still showed my work as their own. They even had copy explaining how they had worked with the clients, when the work in question was done by me before I began working with them. They are making fraudulent claims regarding both my work and my clients (clients I still work for, in fact).

I've sent e-mails and received no response. I've been calling, but they're very good at not being available. I'll give it the rest of the day, and tomorrow I'll begin escalating things.

I really don't enjoy being the heavy. If people would just be honest and respectful, and actually do what they say they are going to do, the world would work so much better. It's a pity those of us that are honest must learn to defend so strenuously against those that aren't.

Here are a few very useful links I found while researching my next steps.

The Graphic Artists Guild has a great section on legal issues called Legalities.

Lorelle VanFossen has a good post on her blog about defending your copyrights online.

And of course there's more on my Graphic Design Lens, including the above two links.