What You Can Do When Someone Steals Your Content
When someone copies your content without permission, whether it’s artwork, writing, video, or other creative work, it can be frustrating and costly. The first question many business owners ask is: what can I actually do about it?
Before moving forward with expensive legal action, it’s worth understanding the practical strategies available to protect your work under copyright law.
Demand Letters: The Starting Point
A common first step is sending a demand letter—also called a cease and desist letter. This type of letter communicates to the infringer that they are using your copyrighted work without permission and asks them to stop. In many cases, it also requests payment as a way to avoid further legal action.
A demand letter typically includes:
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A statement identifying your copyrighted work
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Evidence of unauthorized use
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A warning that legal action may follow
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An offer to settle the matter without going to court
Does It Need to Come from a Lawyer?
Technically, anyone can write and send a demand letter. You could draft it yourself using online templates or AI tools. However, letters sent from a business owner directly are often ignored—especially by larger companies or repeat infringers.
When a letter comes from a law firm, it carries more weight. It signals that you’re serious and potentially ready to take the next step. That alone may persuade the other party to comply, avoiding the need for a lawsuit.
What Happens If They Ignore the Letter?
If the infringer ignores your demand letter, you’re faced with a decision: should you sue?
For most small businesses, the cost of litigation can be too high to justify the potential outcome. You might spend $50,000 to $100,000 in legal fees and end up winning only a small amount—often under $10,000 in damages. In many cases, you can’t even recover the cost of your attorney unless certain conditions are met.
When Legal Action Makes More Sense
If the infringement is severe, repeated, or obviously intentional, there may be stronger grounds to pursue a case. For example, if you’re an artist and a company uses your artwork on their products and earns significant revenue from it, that could qualify as willful and egregious infringement.
In these cases, the court may award more in damages and even order the other side to pay your legal fees. You may also be able to claim damages for every instance your work was used.
That said, it’s still a good idea to talk to an attorney about the details before moving forward. You’ll want to weigh your chances of winning against the time and cost of pursuing the case.
Collecting on a Judgment
Even if you win your case, there’s one more hurdle: collecting the money.
If the infringer is located in another country, it can be extremely difficult to enforce a U.S. court judgment. This often depends on whether the United States has an agreement with that country to honor legal rulings. In places like Great Britain, it’s usually possible. But in many parts of Africa, Russia, or less developed regions, enforcement may not happen at all.
This is another reason why it’s smart to evaluate the full picture—costs, timeline, potential recovery, and the infringer’s location—before heading to court.
Legal Rights vs. Business Decisions
Copyright law gives you strong rights as a creator. But just because you can take legal action doesn’t mean it’s always the right choice for your business.
Many small business owners decide not to sue for minor infringements, especially if the potential damages are small or hard to collect. Instead, they focus on prevention, monitoring, and addressing the issue quickly through cease and desist letters.
Talking to an attorney can help clarify whether a lawsuit is a practical path or whether it’s better to resolve the situation through other means.
Video Transcript
What Happens When Someone Steals Your Content
If someone steals your content, what can you really do about it? In this video, we’ll walk you through the real world strategy behind protecting your copyrighted work. From cease and desist letters to full on lawsuits, you’ll learn when it makes sense to take legal action, how much it could cost, and what you might actually recover.
Weighing the Business Case Before Taking Action
Before you spend thousands defending your rights. Make sure you understand the business case. Behind enforcing copyright. Now, sometimes this is called a demand letter. Why do people call it that? Because you’re demanding that they do something. You’re demanding that they cease and desist. You might even demand that they pay you some money in order for you to avoid suing them.
What a Cease and Desist Letter Typically Says
So the letter might say something like, you are infringing on our copyrighted work. This is our work. Here’s the evidence that we have that you are using it without our permission. I. We can sue you for copyright infringement, but in the interest of saving everybody legal fees, we’ll accept some money in exchange for not suing you.
Why Letters from a Law Firm Carry More Weight
Usually a cease and desist letter or a demand letter or whatever you want to call this letter is sent by a law firm. Why? Well, a law firm doesn’t have to send it, but if you send it yourself, it may not carry the same weight. It may not demonstrate the same seriousness that you are hoping to convey to the recipient of your letter.
Trying the DIY Approach First
The purpose of your letter is to get the other side to stop infringing your copyright. And they’re most likely to take that letter seriously if it comes on law firm letterhead, rather than merely from your company. But sometimes you might say, Hey, let’s give it a try. Let’s send a first draft off. A letter like this can very easily be created with artificial intelligence, or you can find a.
Template online, which you can use. You could send it like that. I do find most of the time the recipient of a letter regarding copyright infringement ignores that letter unless it comes from a law firm. And even then, the recipient may ignore the letter, and at that point you need to decide are you going to sue for copyright infringement?
When Suing May Not Be Worth It
And that’s a conversation to have with your attorney. Many times, small businesses decide it’s just not worth. Spending the money to sue for copyright infringement. Here’s one of the problems. You may not be able to recover any of your attorney’s fees, so you might spend 50 to a hundred thousand dollars going after somebody, and let’s assume they clearly infringed your copyright.
And let’s say you win the case and at the end of the day, the judge says, all right, I find that the defendant infringed. Your copyright, I’m going to award $8,000 in damages. And by the way. That’s not uncommon. In other words, quite regularly the amount of the award is far less than the amount of money that was spent on attorney’s fees in litigation.
When It Might Make Sense to Sue
And so as a practical matter, I. Most of the time, it doesn’t make sense to sue a single party for infringing your copyright. Now, if they’re infringing hundreds of your copyrights, or if it’s willful and wanton and egregious, you might be able to recover your attorney’s fees. In other words, let’s say you’re an artist and you create paintings and some big company.
Rips off all your paintings and starts selling digital art with your paintings or even creating canvases with your paintings, and they’re generating tens of thousands of dollars by including your paintings in their collection of art being sold online. That’s a great example of where their conduct is willful copyright infringement.
It’s wanton, meaning it’s excessive. It’s egregious, and in those cases often you’re able to recover attorney’s fees. And keep in mind too, you’re often able to recover damages for every single infringement. So each work that’s infringed and each time it’s infringed.
Planning with an Attorney
But this is a conversation to have with an attorney because you can talk with an attorney about what are your costs potentially in actually pursuing this to trial.
What is your likelihood of winning? And what is the amount of damages or money you’re likely to get awarded in this case? And by the way too, once you get that award, which is a piece of paper from a judge, what’s the likelihood you can actually collect it from the other party?
Enforcement Challenges Across Borders
I mean, let’s face it, if somebody’s in another country, it can be very difficult to collect an award because you have to transfer that.
Award to that country. We have to have a treaty with that country that allows for the enforcement of a United States judgment in that country. Now, if it’s a Great Britain, no problem, but if you’re talking about one of the small countries in Africa or Russia or some of the other countries that are in less developed portions of the world.
It is unlikely that you are going to be able to enforce a United States Court judgment that says you’re owed money in those countries.
Your Legal Rights as an Artist
So all of these are practical considerations, but at least now you have an idea on what does the copyright law give you as far as rights as an artist? And what are your practical options when somebody else infringes on your rights as an artist?
Free Legal Resources for Business Owners
Now, if you’d like to know more about how to avoid trouble like this. I have a free resource at AaronHall.com/free. I provide information for business owners of small to midsize companies on how to avoid common legal problems. That includes a PDF. It includes videos talking about important issues. I’m Aaron Hall.
I’m an attorney for business owners and entrepreneurial companies. If you’d like, subscribe to this channel so you can get more educational content like this.