Imageline Letter for Those Who Won’t Respond or Cooperate

This is the standard form letter for people who do not cooperate with Mr. Riddick. He uses this email more than once directed to different parties. For an allegedly professional company, notice how personal Mr. Riddick gets in his threats against the alleged infringer. Notice the vocabulary and choice of words he chooses. Mr. Riddick stupidly tries to ask the alleged infringer for their attorney’s name. Why would anyone want to cooperate with that?

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From: George Riddick [mailto:griddick@imageline2.com]
Sent: XXXXday, XXXXuary XX, 2009 XX:XX PM
To: XXXXXXXX@XXXXXXXX.com
Cc: ‘Support Team’; XXXXXXXXX; ‘Gary Gray’; gpaine3@yahoo.com
Subject: FW: URGENT – Copyright Infringement Notification – Cease and Desist
PERSONAL AND CONFIDENTIAL – Willful Copyright Infringement attributed to Northern Lights Embroidery at www.XXXX.com and www.XXXX.com

FOR THE PURPOSE OF SETTLEMENT DISCUSSIONS ONLY – SUBJECT TO F.R.E. 408

Dear XXXXXXXX:

We are very disappointed that you have chosen litigation for you, your family, your business partners, your distributors (i.e. XXXXXXXXX), and your end user customers. The amount of money spent bringing all of these people and companies to court is going to be enormous. But since our designs are all registered with the U.S. Copyright Office, you will end up paying every dime of these legal expenses on all sides, in addition to all infringement and DMCA (Section 1202) penalties as well. These penalties could easily exceed $35,000 per design infringed. What a shame!

As you know, we have shown you documented evidence, including side-by-side comparisons of the designs you infringed to our original design files as registered with the U.S. Copyright Office and deposited with Library of Congress in 1996 and 1997. There is absolutely no question of liability here, XXXXXXX.

We do understand that you have claimed that one of the embroidery designs (presumably the XXXXXXXX design) came to you by way of a published clip art book from one of Imageline’s competitors. We are willing to give you the benefit of the doubt on that one images without further review if we can get this dispute resolved today. There should be no question at all regarding to other two infringed Imageline illustrations and designs we sent to you for review.

Why did you cut off your discussions with Mrs. XXXXXX, XXXXXXXX? She was sincerely trying to help you. Have you even bothered to contact an experienced IP attorney? You may not care about yourself, but how about all of these other people you are dragging into this mess and setting up for additional infringement claims and liabilities, as well?

We offered you a chance to settle this dispute for pennies on the dollar and you have not even had the professional courtesy to respond to the majority of e-mail messages we have sent your way or to our deadlines. Your refusal to respond to XXXXXXX, who went to bat for you and your organization right out of the chute, is despicable in our opinion. Mrs. XXXXXXX did nothing but try to help you out of this mess out of the goodness of her own heart, and what we believe to be a sincere desire to work in an industry free of digital piracy.

We discovered these infringements, XXXXXXXX, not XXXXXX or anyone else.

We have tried hard to work with you and to be fair. We even extended your deadline from last Friday until the end of business today to off-set any delays caused by technical problems on this end late last week.

Please provide us the name, address (both physical and e-mail), and other contact information for your attorney today. We will be placing your case on the top of the case files we turn over to our new contingency attorneys in LA later this week.

For your information, we are also copying the owners of XXXXXXXX, Mrs. XXXXXX, and our representatives in California on this e-mail. We doubt you will respond (you have demonstrated a curious pattern in this regard recently … why we simply do not know), but we do expect some of these others who you have impacted to become even more involved going forward.

Needless to say, you have angered Imageline (and me, personally) with your lack of professionalism and common courtesy in the handling of this extremely serious matter. We were counting on you as an ally, and are impressed with your experience in the XXXXXX arena. We need to work together to eliminate the damages caused by the unlawful distribution of embroidery designs, not stick our heads in the sand and wish it would all simply go away. If only it were that easy!

Do the right thing for those who trusted you, including your distribution partners and your end user customers, XXXXXXXXX. Do not bet that Imageline will not follow through on this to the bitter end. Do yourself a favor. Get your lawyer to check out our 15-year track record in this regard.

We protect talented artists from having their hard-earned property stolen out from under them in the new digital world in which we all now live.

If you have a change of heart, please contact me directly via e-mail this afternoon. Otherwise, we will see you in court.

George P. Riddick, III
Chairman/CEO
Imageline, Inc.
P.O. Box 6275
Ashland, Virginia 23005

804-525-6941 – voice
804-525-6943 – fax

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