Richmastery admits plagiarising parts of books

Richmastery, the property investment scheme founded by Phil Jones, has admitted it breached copyright laws by reproducing other authors' material and claiming it as its own. After High Court proceedings were filed against them, Richmastery, represented by Jones, and John Bedggood, who runs investment seminars for the company, acknowledged that they illegally reproduced material from books published by Empower Leaders Publishing Limited and paid Empower NZ$65,000 in settlement for the infringement in June 2008, court and legal documents seen by interest.co.nz show.The settlement relates to a Richmastery seminar conducted by Bedggood in August 2006. Richmastery claimed that material appearing in the seminar course book was 'Copyright 2006 Richmastery Limited', with all rights reserved. This was despite significant amounts of the material having been copied from the Empower authors. Most of the intellectual property was taken from "Commercial Real Estate Investor's Guide" by Peter Aranyi, with portions copied word for word. Contributions in the book by well-known property author Olly Newland ("The Rascal's Guide to Real Estate") and accountant Mark Withers ("Property Tax - a New Zealand Investor's Guide") were also copied extensively. The terms of the settlement are available here. It also included an undertaking by Jones, Richmastery and Bedggood filed in the Auckland High Court that they would not copy, sell or distribute any material that may infringe the copyright of the three authors. Richmastery founder Jones is leaving NZ to live in America in mid-September. Before he departs, Jones is touring the country to promote a multi-level marketing scheme, MonaVie Juice, with the "Massive Passive Cashflow Generator income opportunity," he said in his blog.