Is anyone being harassed by ReportHost?

Because they owe the money!!

Emails and a letter from their lawyer… I do believe there are more than the 2 inspectors who contacted Nick about ReportHost. This is not about owing ReportHost money for reports. That’s inherently impossible. This is about leaving ReportHost and taking their comments with them…

Yup… I knew there had to be more!!

IMO… Even if this accusation is true, I believe it is within ReportHost’s rights to investigate and protect it’s software.

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Ironic, because doesn’t Spectora and most other online service providers also claim ownership of all content on their servers??

OK, then let’s skip past all crap and jump right to the damages. In any lawsuit, you have to determine your damages. The largest and best comment (narrative) library in the world was built and maintained by Kenton Shepard. He has worked 20+ years on it. It’s total retail value is $130. See World's Largest Library of Inspection Narratives - InterNACHI®

I’ll pay ReportHost $130.00 for every InterNACHI member that you suspect took your comments. Get me the list of their names, count them up, times that number by $130, and email me the bill to nick@internachi.org. I’ll cut a check instantly. You don’t have to go to court to prove anything. All you have to do is have a suspicion and I’ll trust your judgement and pay you for each of them.

I’ll also continue this offer and my payments to ReportHost into the future, forever. That way you never have to bother an InterNACHI member again, ever.

There, now you’re whole and will remain so. Are we done with this now?

I don’t know about Spectora, but if they did, that would be extremely hypocritical because they publish public instructions on how to move comments from other software to them.

If you write a document in Google Docs, is that document property of Google? If you write a document in Microsoft Word, is that document property of Microsoft? You built your narratives in HIP. Are your narratives now property of HIP? It seems silly, but that’s what ReportHost wants to enforce. You build your narratives from scratch on ReportHost’s website and if you ever leave to another software, they’ll sue you for trying to take your comments because ReportHost believes your comments are their property. This is my understanding and if I’m wrong, they can come back on here and clarify. So far they haven’t.

I think you got it right and I agree.

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Apples to Kumquats. Cannot compare one to the other!

This could be dangerous precedence if numbers/informations one downloads to cloud like quick books would become software company property.

ReportHost is proud to provide unique content to each of our users. Of course, we’re always sad to see some of our inspectors move on, either to another provider of report-writing software or their own software. But we take solace in the fact that ReportHost provides unique, expert content that we are proud of and isn’t available elsewhere on the market. We’ve spent a lot of time crafting it and know that this content benefits our customers. Many inspectors come back to ReportHost because our platform provides proprietary content and proprietary narratives that meet their needs.

We protect these proprietary works. One of the reasons we protect them and enforce our rights is to ensure we maintain our competitive edge: it is ReportHost customers that have access and license to use our proprietary content and platform. Our goal is to serve our clientele.

Of course. I just wasted 2 minutes reading something anyone can say about any business.

Anyway, so do we have a deal or not? Accept by tomorrow or the offer is withdrawn and we’ll go a different route.

holy hell if this is true.

It’s our opinion that most inspection software vendors have not created unique template content for their users. Most do not have the expertise to do so.

ReportHost has created unique content, Mr Johnson, which is owned by ReportHost and is licensed to ReportHost users for use within the ReportHost system. This content is protected by intellectual property law just as the software you have written for your own product, Spectacular, is probably protected as your property.

Previously on this forum you claimed to have converted ReportHost users to Spectacular and offered to do so for others, as you had for customers of other software vendors. When you did that, what method did you use to determine what content in their template was theirs vs owned by the vendor? Did you have your customers or potential customers sign a document attesting to their rights to the material in an effort to indemnify yourself for copyright violation?

Copyright is enshrined in the Constitution. I’m at a loss to understand how investigating and defending our rights is “sleazy.”

Copyright exists in original works of authorship at the moment of creation, whether expressly claimed or not. One of the copyrights granted is a reproduction right: no one can reproduce it without permission. Software vendors or competitors in a market may decide there’s something of value in a sample report and might try to appropriate copyrighted material rather than spend the time building expertise and experience and authoring their own original works. But this is wrong and against the entire principal behind copyright. Authors have rights to give away their copyrights, or sell them, or license them. That’s what we do: we license our copyrighted works to our customers so that our customers can use them in their business. Considering our library of works and the time we’ve spent perfecting them, we have a good sense of these works’ value in the market.

I don’t have a dog in this fight, and I can understand having a “proprietary platform” (aka software), but to claim that you have “proprietary narratives”, IMO is a bridge too far and could be a turn off to many inspectors.

This kind of reminds me of an issue many were dealing with around here a few years back in regards to someone claiming they had “proprietary rights” to any one using thermal imaging during a home inspection, I know, it sounds crazy, but it did happen.

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I wasn’t even aware Report Host was still in business.

I stopped using them years ago due to their horrible customer service and way I was treated by their staff. Though they do (did?) make a pretty looking report.

So it sounds like inspectors that use ReportHost don’t create their own templates and narratives ? How does ReportHost know their preloaded narratives/templates are being used by the inspector elsewhere? Is it really possible to copyright narratives fo HI? “the door knob was broken, recommend a handyman replace the door knob” – pretty original, right? so where do I go to check if that narrative is copyrighted :smiley: AFAIK, if you want to enforce your original copyrighted work you need to register it with the copyright office to be able to prove in court you were the original author of the content. Did ReportHost do this for their narratives ??? this all sounds very fishy to say the least.

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Got my notice today thar RH are forcing Spectora to remove my sample report over some similar wording in limitations.

Funny enough, I swear they were NACHI limitations.

They’re ridiculous.

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At least they were kind enough to let me know exactly what sentences needed to be changed.

But I can’t believe they spend the time and money to scan/read thousands upon thousands of reports looking for similar language.

For all the time and money, they could have used that to, you know, actually crete a better product to attract new users.

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How do I get Porch.com to remove my domain name from their internet search engine, I never got 1 inspection lead from porch yet when I enter my domain name on Google it shows up under porch.com. They get the lead and in turn sells that lead that I may generated to other inspectors or contractors. I contacted them numerous times, continues to show up.