What a claim has to establish
Copyright infringement generally comes down to two questions: whether you own a valid copyright in the work, and whether the other side copied protected expression from it. Copying is often shown indirectly, through access to your work combined with similarity that is hard to explain any other way. Shared ideas, common themes, or stock elements count for little, because copyright protects the particular way something is expressed. Ownership is where claims unexpectedly stall, particularly when the work was made by a contractor or bought from someone else. The other side may also argue that its use was licensed or fair, and those arguments are heavily fact-dependent.
Documenting it before it changes
Capture the infringing use as it appears now, with the full web address, the date, and screenshots or saved copies, since pages get edited or removed quickly once the user senses trouble. Gather the evidence of your own authorship: original files with their metadata, drafts, earlier publication dates, and any registration certificate. If you licensed the work to anyone, find those agreements, since a licensee may have sublicensed it or gone beyond what was allowed. Note when you first learned of the use, because these claims are subject to a limitations period. Registration matters here too, as a lawsuit over a work first published in the United States usually cannot be filed until the Copyright Office has acted on an application.
Choosing a route
Not every unauthorized use calls for the same response. A takedown notice to the platform or host can remove material quickly but does nothing about money already made from it. A demand letter can open a licensing conversation, and many disputes end with a paid license going forward. For smaller claims, the Copyright Claims Board offers a streamlined forum inside the Copyright Office, though the other side can opt out and the amounts it can award are capped. Federal court is the route for larger disputes and for situations where you need the use stopped by order. We help you weigh those routes against what the use is actually costing you and what you want the end result to look like.
