All Righte Reserved

I don't know from where you are, but this site could give you some first answers, perhaps. As well is the info here.

Thanks, Walter.

I live in the UK, the person concerned lives in the US.

Re: All Righte Reserved

"All Rights Reserved" is a fairly common notice on copyrighted materials, but, as far as I can tell, it doesn't mean anything. It may have meant something at one time, but under the Berne Convention, most nations don't even require the circle C (©) any more to copyright a work.

You mention that you have an "idea" that you want to protect, but ideas can't be copyrighted. Only the expression of an idea can be copyrighted. So, for instance, I may have an idea for a movie, but only the movie itself can be subject to copyright. The only way to protect an idea is to keep it a secret (which you didn't seem to do in this case).

Since the Berne Convention eliminated most mandatory registration requirements under national copyright laws, there is no longer any central place for checking to see whether something is copyrighted or not. But then, under the Convention's liberal copyright regime, there's really no need for a central registry: you can safely assume that any expression, fixed in a tangible medium, is subject to copyright. Thus, if this guy has written something that expresses the idea that you claim as your own, that writing is copyrighted. That doesn't mean, however, that the underlying idea is copyrighted.