Council for Refractive Surgery

Council for Refractive Surgery Quality Assurance Claims Dr. Farzad Yaghouti of Global Laser Vision 'Rips Off' Lasik Patient Advocacy

SACRAMENTO, Calif., Sept. 12 /PRNewswire/ -- Farzad Yaghouti, MD of Global Laser Vision Medical Center has been accused of publishing in violation of United States copyright law at least 19 protected works of the Council for Refractive Surgery Quality Assurance (CRSQA, http://www.usaeyes.org/ ) on his Lasik clinic's website. CRSQA is a nonprofit nongovernmental patient advocacy that claims to have never provided Dr. Yaghouti permission to use any of its Lasik patient information articles.

"Protected items copied by Dr. Yaghouti from our website include detailed articles about Lasik, potential complications, and important research about laser eye surgery," says Glenn Hagele, CRSQA's founder and Executive Director. "In my personal opinion, Dr. Yaghouti is ripping off a nonprofit patient advocacy for his own financial gain. It is deplorable." The articles represent months of research and tens of thousands of dollars of work, according to Hagele.

In 2001 the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued a warning letter to Dr. Yaghouti for performing Lasik laser eye surgery on patients with an excimer laser that had been improperly modified and was not in compliance with FDA requirements. CRSQA previously issued a counterfeit Lasik laser alert. "Any perceived association with Dr. Yaghouti by our articles being on his website could be considered detrimental to our organization," says Hagele.

CRSQA claims the unauthorized publication on Dr. Yaghouti's GlobalLaserVision.com website was an attempt by Dr. Yaghouti to gain credibility and popularity with the Internet search engines Google, Yahoo!, MSN, and others. Search engine evaluation of a website includes the quality of its content. CRSQA claims the high quality articles that Dr. Yaghouti copied from CRSQA evidently raised the GlobalLaserVision.com website in search engine rankings and caused Dr. Yaghouti's web pages to be listed above his Southern California competitors. In some instances the copied articles on Dr. Yaghouti's website ranked higher than the original article on CRSQA's website. Higher search engine rankings would potentially drive more lucrative eye surgery patients to Dr. Yaghouti's practice.

When questioned about the unauthorized use of protected works, Dr. Yaghouti stated in an email: "I did not realize the information was copyrighted."

At the bottom of each of the original 19 pages that were duplicated in 39 locations on Dr. Yaghouti's GlobalLaserVision.com website is the statement: "Unless otherwise indicated, Copyright 1997-2006 (C) Council for Refractive Surgery Quality Assurance, a nonprofit organization. No images, graphics, or text may be reproduced in any media without express written permission. All Rights Reserved."

CRSQA filed a Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) complaint with Dr. Yaghouti's website host and the Internet search engines Google, Yahoo!, MSN, and others. The DMCA was passed by the US Congress in 1998 and signed into law by then president Bill Clinton as a comprehensive expansion of copyright protection in the digital age. The DMCA requires that search engines and website hosts immediately remove public access to websites when notified of copyright law violation. Shortly after DMCA notification, Dr. Yaghouti removed most of CRSQA's works from his website, however not before Microsoft moved to limit access.

In an extraordinary indication of the severity of the situation, Microsoft has banned all pages at Dr. Yaghouti's GlobalLaserVision.com website from its MSN.com search engine results. MSN is the Internet's third largest search engine with over 40 million searches each month, according to Nielsen//NetRatings.

According to CRSQA's counsel, Dr. Yaghouti's unauthorized use of CRSQA's original work "directly violates (CRSQA's) exclusive rights and is in violation of United States Copyright laws." The unauthorized republication of CRSQA's articles by Dr. Yaghouti started in March of 2006, with an additional article copied to GlobalLaserVision.com every few weeks, according to available records. In addition to submitting the DMCA complaints, CRSQA is evaluating litigation against Dr. Yaghouti, according to Hagele.

The Council for Refractive Surgery Quality Assurance is a nonprofit nongovernmental Lasik patient advocacy organization that evaluates and certifies doctors who perform surgery to reduce the need for corrective lenses.

Council for Refractive Surgery Quality Assurance