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How can one legally make a company remove the website due to false representation. The domain belongs to the trading company as well as the company name. But the supplier has terminated the distribution agreement almost a year ago and the trading company is still showing the suppliers products and logo on the website. This is very frustrating for the supplier and the new trading company he has appointed to do his sales& marketing plus distribution. products. Customers are confused and makes it quite annoying having to explain that they are no longer their reps.

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Have you contacted the web site? It might be that they just do not update the web site frequently. – Ross Apr 8 '11 at 17:55

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First-- assuming it hasn't been done -- pick up the phone and ask to speak to the webmaster about a copyright violation on their website you would like to resolve.

If they are in the same location as you, go walk over to them and walk in and ask to meet with someone in charge and say that you are there to solve a problem without getting lawyers involved. All you want is your copyright material removed from their website.

Assuming you have done that and it doesn't work:

Send a letter (on a lawyers letterhead if you can) that assumes that it is a simple oversight. Provide a specific URL of each place that the logo and name are mentioned with explicit request to have it removed.

If it isn't. Send a cease-and-desist letter (once again on a lawyers letterhead if you can, but it doesn't need to be). There are lots of templates on the web you can customize for this.

If this doesn't work then you send notice of intent to file a copyright infringement suite with some high punitive damage claim -- like $6 million.

If that doesn't work -- file the copyright infringement suit.

Here is the cease and desist letter I often use:

Dear Sir or Madam:

It has come to our attention that you are operating a web site found at http://www.yoursite.com. Your web site contains the following copyrighted images belonging to our client [name of client]: [list of images]. As you neither asked for nor received permission to use these images, nor to make or distribute copies, including electronic copies, of same, we believe you have willfully infringed our client’s rights under 17 U.S.C. Section 101 et seq. and could be liable for statutory damages as high as $150,000 as set forth in Section 504(c)(2) therein. We hereby demand that you immediately cease and desist use of these images.

Based upon the foregoing, we hereby demand that your confirm to us in writing within ten (10) days of receipt of this letter that: (i) you have removed the aforementioned infringing images from your site; and (ii) you will refrain from posting any similar infringing material on the Internet or any other online service in the future. If you do not comply with our request to remove the infringing images from the web site within ten (10) days from the date of this letter, you will leave us with no other choice but to pursue all available legal and equitable remedies against you.

Sincerely,

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