Well its not so much a horror story now but at the time it made my blood boil for weeks !!!
We had a stand at an exhibition last year. During the day we had my laptop on the stand, flicking through our portfolio.
A man called "James" started chatting to us for 25mins and was really interested in rebranding his IT company. Other people approached the stand and James stood to the side and said he was going to look through our portfolio and at the laptop because he was going to buy one.
10mins later he was gone BUT the laptop was still there.
3 weeks later I opened up a regional newspaper and saw an advert that we had been working on, exact same design, style, image AND tagline ! Really strange, but how could anyone know about our concept ? It was being used in this newspaper to promote the services of an advertising company in Glasgow who were trying to break into the Highland market.
I Googled them and found a photo of two of the directors....one of them was "James" our friend from the exhibition.
To cut a long story...a bit shorter... he must have transfered some files called "AutumnAd_concepts" onto his USB key when looking at our computer. I had stupidly left them in the HD. 3 weeks later the same company used something very similar to another of our designs that was in the same file for a follow up advert.
What did I do ???
I called him and asked him about it. He claimed that he wasnt even at the conference ! A quick look through the delegate and attendance list showed that he was. When challenged again, he claimed it must have been a coincidence !
Over the following 3 months, "James" had to buy 12 new expensive tyres for his BMW. :wink:
