Ray Ellis for San Diego Council 2016

Attn: Taylor Bloom

12460 Anderson Ridge Place
San Diego CA 92130
Taylorbloom@gmail.com
March 14, 2016
VIA EMAIL AND FEDERAL EXPRESS
Bruce Lightner
8551 La Jolla Shores Dr.
La Jolla, CA 92037-3044
lightner@lightner.net
Re:

Unauthorized Exploitation of Intellectual Property

and Copyright Infringement

Dear Mr. Lightner:

I represent Ray Ellis in his campaign for San Diego City Council, District 1. This
letter concerns your misappropriation of my clients intellectual property for use on your
campaign website. Please direct all future correspondence concerning this matter to my
attention.
The Ray Ellis for Council 2016 campaign has a website at
http://www.ellisforcouncil.com (the Ellis website). We have recently become aware
that the content and code of the Ellis website, which was created and paid for by the Ellis
campaign, has been misappropriated and appears on the website for Bruce Lightner for
District 1 (http://www.brucelightner.org) (the Lightner website). The Ellis campaign
hired a website designer to develop a unique campaign website for Mr. Ellis. The Ellis
website was paid for by the Ray Ellis for Council 2016 campaign and is customized with
features that signify the owner of the underlying code.
Federal copyright infringement is blatantly apparent when comparing the
underlying code and content of the Lightner website with that of the Ellis website.
You stole the code and content from the Ellis website and used it to create the
Lightner website. When conducting a side-by-side comparison of the Ellis and Lightner

websites, they are nearly identical in appearance, content, design, layout, and overall
outlook. Further, the underlying CSS and HTML of the two websites is nearly identical
and code containing identifying information unique to the Ellis website is present in
numerous places on the Lightner website. This proves beyond doubt that the content and
code on the Lightner website was misappropriated from the Ellis website.
Facebook
The Ellis website has a link to the Facebook page for Ray Ellis District 1 campaign
and the unique Facebook Identification number assigned to the Ray Ellis for District 1
Facebook page is included in the underlying code on the Ellis website. The code on the
Lightner website contains this unique Facebook Identification number assigned to the
Ray Ellis for District 1 Facebook page. The inclusion of the Ellis unique identification
number in the Lightner code is evidence enough to support a federal copyright
infringement claim.
Differential testing
To confirm that the content and code of the Lightner website was taken from the
Ellis website, a differential assessment was conducted. A differential assessment is a tool
that can be used to compare two versions of the same webpage to see the differences
between the two. This is a vital tool for programmers to use to debug their software and
see who changed what code and when. For example, a common question answered by
differential tests is This code used to work, but now it doesnt. What was changed?
Before discussing the changes found by the differential test ran on the Ellis and
Lightner websites, it is important to note the fact that the test was even possible to run on
these two websites is undeniable evidence that these two HTML files are simply two
versions of the same file (the first being Ray Ellis original website, the second being the
copied and pasted version that you published under your own name). To illustrate, if I run
a differential test on the homepage for Google and the homepage for Facebook, the test
will fail, as those two websites have no overlap whatsoever. The Ellis website contains
1,081 lines of code, and the differential test run on the Ellis and Lightner websites only
uncovered 66 changes to Ellis original codebase. All of these changes are minor content
changes to names and images.
There is no possible explanation for the overwhelming similarities between the Ellis
and Lightner websites, other than the Lightner website was copied and pasted from the
Ellis website. This is blatant intellectual property infringement.
Class names
The Ellis website contains unique class names that indicate who created the
underlying code and content. These class names begin with the name of the Ellis
websites designer, Efund. The class names located in the Lightner website begin with
the name of the website designer Efund. Efund has confirmed that it was never hired by
the Lightner campaign to develop a campaign website and has no relationship to the
Lightner campaign whatsoever. The presence of the class name of the designer who was

Ray Ellis for Council 2016

12460 Anderson Ridge Place, San Diego, CA 92130

paid by the Ellis campaign to create the Ellis website on the Lightner website is evidence
enough to support a federal copyright infringement claim.
Thus, as the overwhelming evidence described above shows, you have violated the
intellectual property rights of the Ellis campaign. We request that the Bruce Lightner for
District 1 website be taken down within 72 hours or we will be forced to take further
legal action. Should you wish to discuss this matter further please feel free to contact me.
Regards,

Taylor A. Bloom, Esq.

cc:

Tony Manolatos
Ray Ellis

Ray Ellis for Council 2016

12460 Anderson Ridge Place, San Diego, CA 92130