Don't you hate it when you share an absolutely brilliant idea with your colleague and she runs to your boss and presented your idea as hers? It's totally dishonorable, absolutely despicable and utterly disgusting when such scumbags are bathed in the light of your glory while you languish in the back-waters of obscurity. That idea of yours is an intellectual property. Don't assume that only books, music, lyrics and the likes are intellectual property. Your concepts, your ideas, your sketches, drafts, charts and tables are YOUR intellectual properties which you should protect.

Trust me, us folks in the creative industry has lots of horror stories on intellectual property theft to tell. My latest peeve is with this guy from some mid-eastern bloc country who stole my articles, "How Much to Pay your Advertising Agency?" and "Does Pay by Performance works with a Marketing Agency?" and placed them in his blog. I was totally unaware until the editor at ezinearticles alerted me that my account with the renowned 2-million traffic website was suspended. She graciously directed me to view that scumbag's blog. Ezinearticle's policy requires that "… all submitted articles be either original articles written by you or articles to which you have an exclusive right to. Please keep in mind that to have an exclusive right to an article, only your name may be associated with it. If you purchased this article as part of a pack or received it from a distributor/affiliate site, so have others so you do not have an exclusive right to it. Can you please explain the above? What is the source of your article?"

My reaction came swift and sharp - shocked, stunned, anger, ruffled, indignant, despair, frustrated, wronged. For a marketing and advertising agency, our products are all intellectual properties; our goods are our ideas and creativity in the form of strategy papers, presentations, brainstorming and discussions plus creative proposals in the form of visuals, copy, scripts and storyboards. It is not uncommon for creative folks to present ideas to clients and potential prospects and have them rejected (note: even rejected ideas are still your intellectual property). That's okay, different strokes for different folks. What's absolutely not acceptable, is when that client/prospect extracts snippets of what they like, brief the "other" marketing agency/freelancer, and viola, a cross bred campaign is born. I still remembered proposing an advent garte exhibition set for a Generation-X targeted fragrance launch for men. The client said it was not in line with what they had in mind. We were flabbergasted as we really believed we had nailed the campaign. Well, may the best campaign win, I was looking forward to learning from the winning entry. Guess what? When I walked into shopping mall, I saw our concept of "petrol drums as fragrance showcase", and the much debated "embossed metal sheet as flooring" proudly adorning the entire exhibition area. We wrote to the Managing Director a letter expressing our outrage and attached with evidence of work plus a bill. He paid.

So for those whose intellectual properties were stolen, stand up and fight against such intellectual property theft and hijacks. Otherwise, not only will you be the victim, you are further consenting the scumbag to further victimize others. Right now, I'm reading how to seek redress by getting scumbag's blog down as he has hijacked other writers' contribution too. I'm glad that I have proven my innocence and worthiness as Ezinearticles.com quickly restored my account and even awarded me with their "Expert Author" status. Ezinearticles' integrity in screening all writers' contributor by human editors and not via some writing software, and the fact that they took the necessary effort and precautions to prevent fraud really won my most profound admiration and appreciation.

To clients out there who didn't like the overall presentation but found snippets of it interesting, my suggestion is do either or these: Get the selected agency to review the ousted agency's work and come out with something better OR buy the idea from the ousted agency. Don't go cheap by copying. Copying is not flattery in the creative industry; it can lead to empty stomachs and companies folding up. To creative talents, my take is not to be victimized, do whatever you can to protect your intellectual property.

You are a victim only if you allow yourself to be bullied. I don't intend to be one.