This section is intended to help designers to protect their Intellectual Property (IP) rights when their work (3D models) is stolen, shared illegally, or leaked online on other marketplaces, websites, communication groups and channels.
IP law protects the author of the creation. As CGTrader operates as an intermediary, the company does not own IP rights to the models, the designers (sellers) retain all rights to their work. For this reason, CGTrader can only report and try removing the infringing content which contains CGTrader trademarks or copyrights (such as name or logo).
As not all the designers are familiar with their IP rights and how to protect them, we decided to share some tips and help our users to handle such unpleasant situations and have the illegal shared or sold content removed from online sources.
There are usually 4 steps of action that the designer can take to have the infringing content removed and we would advise to take them in the following order:
- Contacting the infringer/uploader (if applicable)
- Reporting the content to domain or platform owners/admins
- Reporting the infringement to ISP (hosting provider)
- Filing the Google delisting request
We will cover all these steps in detail in separate articles under this section.