As a WPBay seller, you may find your products being copied, shared, modified, or sold on another website without your permission.

Selling through WPBay does not transfer ownership of your work to WPBay. You retain the intellectual property rights you hold in your product, while customers receive the rights granted under the applicable product licence.

As the rights owner, you can take action against genuine copyright infringement. This guide explains how to collect evidence, locate the responsible service provider, submit a takedown notice, remove infringing search results, and report larger piracy operations to WPBay.

First, determine whether the use is actually unauthorised

Finding your product on another website does not always mean copyright infringement has occurred.

This is particularly important for WordPress plugins and themes. WordPress is released under the GPL, and WordPress.org takes the position that derivative plugins and themes inherit that licence. The GPL permits recipients to copy, modify, redistribute, and even charge for GPL-covered software, provided they comply with the licence.

Redistribution of GPL-covered code is therefore not automatically copyright infringement merely because you did not approve it or because someone else is charging for it.

A valid complaint may still exist where someone has copied material not covered by the GPL, violated the applicable licence conditions, removed required copyright or licence notices, distributed proprietary images or documentation, shared stolen licence keys, accessed your update service without authorisation, or used your product name and branding in a misleading way.

Different parts of a product may have different licences. Before submitting a takedown notice, identify precisely which material you own, how it is licensed, and which use you believe is unlawful.

For more information, review the WordPress licence explanation, the GNU GPL, and WPBay’s Trademark and Real-World Product Rules.

Preserve evidence before contacting the website

Collect evidence before sending any complaint because the page or download may disappear after the operator is contacted.

Save the exact URL of every page and download being reported. Take dated screenshots showing the product name, description, price, seller identity, download buttons, and any misleading claims about official support or affiliation.

Where it is safe and lawful to do so, preserve a copy of the distributed archive for comparison. Do not install or execute a suspected pirated or “nulled” product on a live website or your main computer. Such packages may have been modified and can contain malicious code.

Keep your original source files, repository history, release archives, publication dates, product listing, copyright notices, and other records showing when you created and released the work. File hashes and a focused code comparison can also help establish whether the external package contains your material.

Evidence should demonstrate more than similar functionality. Two WordPress products can perform the same task without one copying the protected expression of the other.

Identify who can remove the content

Start by checking the website’s footer, contact page, legal page, copyright policy, or abuse page. Some websites publish a dedicated copyright address or designated DMCA agent.

For services operating in the United States, search the U.S. Copyright Office Designated Agent Directory. This can provide the correct contact for submitting a notice to a hosting platform or online service.

You can use ICANN Lookup to identify a domain’s registrar and available registration data. ICANN now uses RDAP as the modern replacement for traditional WHOIS lookup services.

Remember that the domain registrar is not necessarily the hosting provider and usually cannot remove individual files from a website. The hosting company, marketplace, repository, file-sharing service, or website operator is normally a more appropriate recipient.

If the website uses Cloudflare and its hosting provider is hidden, submit the report through Cloudflare’s copyright abuse form. Cloudflare generally does not host the website itself, but it may forward a complete complaint to the website operator and hosting provider or provide relevant hosting contact information.

Submit a copyright takedown notice

Send a complete notice to the website operator, hosting provider, marketplace, repository, or file-sharing service hosting the disputed content.

Your notice should identify the copyrighted work, provide the exact infringing URLs, explain which material was copied, include your complete contact information, contain the required good-faith and accuracy statements, and include your physical or electronic signature.

Do not report only a domain homepage if the disputed content appears on specific pages. Include each relevant product, download, or repository URL.

You can adapt the template from WPBay’s DMCA and Intellectual Property Notice Process. The notice must be sent to the external service responsible for the content, not to WPBay.

A DMCA notice is a legal statement. Do not claim ownership of GPL-covered code, third-party libraries, stock assets, or other material you do not exclusively control. Material misrepresentations in a notice can result in legal liability.

Reporting repositories and file-sharing links

If your source code or complete product appears on GitHub, follow GitHub’s DMCA Takedown Policy. GitHub generally expects claimants to identify the specific copyrighted files and, where possible, give repository owners an opportunity to make changes rather than demanding removal of more content than necessary.

For Google Drive, Dropbox, MEGA, social networks, marketplaces, cyberlockers, and similar platforms, use the provider’s official copyright or intellectual property reporting form. Reports submitted through the correct form are usually processed more efficiently than general support emails.

If stolen licence keys, private credentials, or confidential information appear in a repository, the platform may also have a separate process for reporting exposed private information or security-sensitive data.

Removing piracy pages from search engines

Removing a result from a search engine does not remove the source website, but it can make the page substantially harder to find.

Use Google’s legal removal request to report copyright infringement appearing in Google Search or another Google service. Submit the exact URLs shown in search results, not only the website’s homepage.

Copyright and trademark concerns appearing in Bing can be reported through Microsoft’s infringement reporting page.

If the piracy website advertises through Google, Microsoft, Meta, or another advertising network, you may also submit a separate intellectual property complaint to the advertising provider. Advertising and organic search results are normally handled through different reporting systems.

What happens after a notice is submitted?

The recipient may remove or disable the content, request additional information, forward the complaint to its customer, or reject the notice if it is incomplete or unsupported.

The website operator may also submit a counter-notification. If that happens, the service provider may restore the material unless you begin appropriate court proceedings within the applicable period.

Keep copies of your notice, attachments, delivery confirmation, ticket number, and every response. If nothing happens, follow up using the same case number before submitting duplicate reports.

Where an EU hosting service or platform is involved, you may also be able to use its notice-and-action mechanism under Article 16 of the Digital Services Act. A precise notice should explain why the content is illegal and identify its exact electronic location.

If the provider does not respond

Confirm first that your notice was sent to the correct provider and contained all required information.

You can then contact the upstream hosting provider, the platform hosting the file, its CDN or proxy provider, and the relevant search engines. A registrar complaint may be appropriate where the domain itself is involved in fraud, impersonation, or another violation of the registrar’s policies, but registrars generally do not control website content.

For persistent, commercial, or high-value infringement, consider consulting an intellectual property lawyer. WPBay cannot determine whether court proceedings are commercially worthwhile or provide legal representation.

Do not attempt to hack, disrupt, threaten, or publicly expose the website operator. Those actions can create separate legal and security problems.

Report significant piracy to WPBay

After sending your external complaint, you may also report the case to support@wpbay.com.

Include your WPBay product URL, every external URL, screenshots or other evidence, a copy of the notice you submitted, the recipient of that notice, and any case or ticket number you received. Tell us if the website is copying multiple WPBay products, impersonating WPBay, using WPBay branding, or appears connected to a WPBay customer or seller account.

You remain responsible for enforcing the intellectual property rights in your product. WPBay does not automatically have authority to submit a legal notice on your behalf.

However, WPBay may investigate wider patterns, preserve relevant platform records, act against accounts that violate its policies, coordinate information where several sellers are affected, or take direct action where WPBay’s own name, website, branding, or rights are being misused.

WPBay cannot guarantee that an external website, host, search engine, or registrar will remove reported content.

Monitoring for unauthorised copies

Periodically search for your product name, distinctive description text, documentation phrases, filenames, screenshots, and combinations such as the product name with “download,” “free,” “nulled,” “GPL,” or “license key.”

Google Alerts can monitor newly indexed pages containing your product or brand name. GitHub search can help locate publicly indexed code, filenames, licence keys, or documentation copied into repositories.

Search matches should be reviewed manually. A product name appearing on a website is not by itself proof of infringement, and automated bulk notices can produce serious false claims.

Third-party monitoring and takedown companies are also available, but WPBay does not endorse a particular provider. Before paying for one, verify its current ownership, reputation, cancellation policy, reporting methods, and whether each notice is reviewed by a person before submission.

Making your products harder to abuse

No technical measure can completely prevent a customer from copying downloadable software, especially when its source code must be provided.

You can still reduce casual abuse by using secure, short-lived download links, account protection, signed update packages, reasonable activation limits, and carefully designed licence-key controls. Access to private updates, support, hosted services, templates, and other account-based benefits can remain separate from the rights granted under the software licence.

Keep clear copyright and licence notices in your files and documentation. Document which components are GPL-covered and which assets have separate licences. This makes a future complaint more accurate and easier for a service provider to assess.

Where appropriate and disclosed to customers, unique download identifiers may help trace leaked packages. Any tracking must respect privacy and data-protection law.

Avoid destructive licence checks, excessive obfuscation, or code that damages a customer’s website after an activation expires. These measures can harm legitimate customers while doing little to stop determined redistribution.

The most durable protection is to make the official product more valuable than an unofficial copy through trusted updates, verified downloads, security fixes, documentation, and genuine seller support.

Final reminder

Piracy is frustrating, but every unauthorised-looking use is not necessarily copyright infringement. This distinction matters particularly in the WordPress ecosystem because of the GPL.

Preserve the evidence, identify the exact rights involved, report only the material you genuinely control, and use the official reporting channel of the service that can actually remove it.

If the facts or licensing position are unclear, obtain independent legal advice before submitting a formal notice.