Stealing Design, Copying of Other People’s Work

Recently, I stumbled upon a site belonging to an individual (www.xomox.cn) and discovered that my entire design portfolio has been stolen and copied word for word, to use as his own. I don’t think anyone has ever experienced this kind of blatant infringement before. I knew him long ago in New York City through a girlfriend as she was dating him. Let’s just say this has never been someone that I trusted, although we were in the same field of graphic design, I had advised him on many design and career path matters. Almost 10 years later, I discovered that he stole my work – he’s located in China so I can’t really pursue this legally (or could I?). He was wishing that I would never find out but it’s the web, so you can find anything. I called him and he promptly took it down, realizing that he’s in for a lot of legal drama. His explanation was that “my hard drive is down and I had to show my prospective clients some inspiration of work so I just borrowed yours and was going to call you for permission and now that we are clear, can I borrow your piece on Ann Taylor just to show my client that this is the direction I want to pursue?”. (As if I should be flattered) No, this guy didn’t credit my name, the companies I worked for. Even the project description and sizes of images are identical.

The images below show MY work on the left column, and his exact replica on the right. On his client list he listed all my clients verbatim.  They are completely identical. How can we protect our work so this doesn’t happen?

I hope this never happens to any designer out there.

jennyng.com (owner) vs. xomox.cn (copier)