Someone posted in a Facebook group recently that he thinks he's been ripped off. He was pretty sure that someone who had attended a training course of his had taken his materials and then run the training in their school. So, what can you do to lessen the chance of something like this happening to you?

Here are my thoughts on the matter. Please bear in mind these are my personal opinions, and I'm not giving advice, legal or otherwise. But I hope you find the points worth thinking about.

Draw up a contract

If you have a contract stating that your materials won't be reproduced or re-used without your written permission, you have a leg to stand on in the case of a dispute. Hopefully, the existence of the contract will deter anyone from breaching it, thereby avoiding the possibility of a dispute.

If a contract is not feasible...

If a contract seems too heavy-handed, consider drafting a very short statement instead.

If a statement is not feasible...

But what if even that seem 'over the top'?

If even that is not appropriate, at the very least have an email conversation setting out an agreement. I don't know if this has the same status as a formal contract, but I do know that it has stood me in good stead a couple of times.

For example, one company told me verbally that when I send my invoice, not to put down my expenses as they don't pay them. I dug out an email exchange in which I'd stated my fee and included the words "Plus expenses", and to which they'd replied "Fine". My expenses were paid.

Include unique content

When I give training I tend to include content that isn't written down, such as lots of anecdotes based on my experience. It enriches the written content of the course in a way that makes it hard to reproduce. You might argue that that wouldn't matter, because if someone decided to run one of my courses, nobody would know all those anecdotes are missing. That's true, but it would end up being a very short course!

Don't include lots of information on slides

Slides should serve as a prompt or a summary, not an essay. I know some people use photos on their slides and very little text, for the simple reason that without the commentary, the slides are rendered useless.

Constantly update your course

I always keep my courses up-to-date. I've even been known to include research findings that came out the day before the course. I try and make that known because it means that anyone taking one of my courses not being run by me will be aware, hopefully, that they are not getting the real deal.

Add value

As an example of adding value, I almost always provide a unique log-in and extra materials for participants on my courses. These can be ripped off too of course, so one thing you might do is remove them after a short period of time, or use the personalised copy version discussed soon, under 'Use a third party site'. I also tend to use Google Classroom, which requires a code to access.

Use watermarks

You can watermark your materials. I don't do that because it makes them harder to read. An alternative, though, is to include screenshots that include your name.

This came in handy for me once. I was browsing the computer magazines in a newsagent when I spotted a shortened version of an article of mine in a magazine I'd had no dealings with (I'd had the full article published in a sister magazine.). I contacted the editor and he said it was similar to my article but that it hadn't been submitted by me. I asked him he could account for the accompanying screenshots which clearly included my name. It turned out that the publication of the new article was 'an oversight', and they paid me a further fee.

Distribute materials as PDFs

Doing so will make them marginally harder to edit. You can go further and implement a form of digital rights management (DRM) by password-protecting the documents and even making it impossible to print or copy from them.

I don't do those things because I think that if someone is determined enough they will find a way around those obstacles, and all that will be achieved is that the vast majority of genuine and honest recipients of the material will be inconvenienced.

Use a third party site

A way of achieving a combination of using PDFs and using watermarks is to open an account with a company like Payhip. That will enable you to sell your PDFs with some very useful options:

You are given a unique url for the download, which you can choose to share only with course participants on the day of the training.
You can remove the resources as soon as the training is over or after a short, and specified period of time. For example, The National STEM Learning Centre in England sets its course resources to be unavailable after a certain date (around two weeks after the course, if memory serves me well).
You can set the price to zero, or....
...You can charge for your resources but give your trainees a code that will give them a 100% discount.
You can limit the number of times it is downloaded, so if you know the school has 32 teachers you can set it at 32.
You can also specify that the PDF will contain the email address of the person who downloaded it, and the date. Test this out for yourself by downloading a test document I have made available here: https://payhip.com/b/3TDLP

Include copyright information

Strictly speaking you may not need to, but I think it's a good idea to have something like '©2025 your name' in the footer, and a notice at the front to say that copying is not allowed without your express written permission. It just makes it harder for someone to make 100 copies and then plead ignorance on the grounds that they thought it was licenced under Creative Commons.

Publicise like crazy

Once you have a training course ready to go, publicise it a lot, so that it is associated with you. Mind you, this could have the opposite effect, of giving people the idea of ripping you off!

Set up a Google alert or two

Set up a Google alert for your name, and perhaps one for the name of your course: https://www.google.co.uk/alerts.

I was once alerted to the fact that a Local Authority was, without permission, selling a resource I'd created. I contacted them and offered them the opportunity to take it down or share the proceeds with me. They chose the former.

Concluding remarks

To be honest, I think if someone really wants to steal your stuff there's not much you can do about it. However, it's worth trying to make it difficult, just in case a large company decides to do so.