You’ve worked many years on your website, learning, tweaking and shaking the bugs out of your marketing and SEO. You probably have hundreds if not thousands of hours invested in your work. Suddenly you see a competitor site that has been stagnant for months or years suddenly gets it in their fat head that it’s easier to steal good copy that to create it themselves, or they find you have a good position in the search engines  and they decide to steal fragments of your copy, your keywords and in the worst case your entire business model. Their goal? It’s simply a greedy attempt to steal what you have already developed.

We know exactly how you feel, we have competitors too. Some are courteous and respect others copyrights and trademarks and while toes may get stepped on from time to time a letter requesting the removal or modification of site copy might resolve the problem, or it might make it much worse.

Web site operators with overblown egos can take the request as an insult and begin an all out campaign to steal customers or have you dethroned from the serps. In most cases this attempt will result in the opposite. Duplicating another sites sales copy is tantamount to search engine suicide it will also make you look like the bad guy.

Some really desperate sites will attempt an all out copying of your business model, using identical file locations and every one of the third party scripts you employ. While there is nothing illegal about the use of the scripts by themselves, there is a problem when the intent is to arrange those scripts in an identical manner that you have used. Any court in the land will be able to see that the permutations of arranging identical scripts in an identical manner within the same business niche is not a coincidence, it’s malicious.
One sure sign of a guilty site is hiding their tracks by blocking archival robots or cloaking pages.

This is similar to an artist using the colors Red Green and Blue. Alone each color is harmless, but when you arrange the three in the exact same way as your competitor, isn’t that forgery? Web site forgery does not have to be exact in appearance, and while theme is important, it’s the function that is infringing.
This is a gray area of the law that will become more important as the web grows and the thieves make themselves known.

We know of one such thief, but the questions then becomes how to deal with them.
There are several approaches. First, you can get pissed off (which you will) then fly off the handle and send them a personally written cease & desist letter. This rarely works. You can try the nice approach, but that too rarely works. If the infringement would cause financial damages, then best approach is to find a local attorney who handles copyright or trade dress issues. Depending upon the degree of infringement, they might not want to set the hook right away. Sometimes it’s best to let the fish take as much line as possible to build a better case. Then when the infringer gets bolder, which they typically will, the hook is set. If the case is severe, the attorney will not only set the hook, but they’ll probably drop a few stick of dynamite in the water too.

Rightly so; copyright and trademark infringer’s are no different than thieves. It’s just that the IP bank is a lot easier to rob. A simple viewing of another sites source code can reveal a lot. Being dumb enough to use it against your competitor is, as they say, lower than “whale s**t”. Our advice to those who copy other sites is this: Think about what you are doing. Is it right? Did you come up with the idea 100% on your own? If not, you might want to spend some of that extra money you’re making off your competitors on good legal counsel.

Being that most site owners are located long distances apart, a jury trial is probably out of the question. Short of formal legal action, the best way to cripple a copy cat site is to file a DMCA take down complaint against them. Get your ducks in a row for this one and consult with an attorney before you file. If you are justified in making the claim, your competitor will be out of the internet business for a long time. Be warned, if you commit perjury by making a false claims or statements then expect legal action from a higher court.

If you’re not smart enough to read books or find your marketing or website concepts by researching sites outside your niche market and offer up something unique then your days as a successful internet business may be numbered.

For copy cat site operators plagiarism may become a catch 22. Once a site tries to copy something from another site it can become an endless Wild West battle to out do each other, creating more work overall work for the thief that if they’d gone in their own direction. They must remember their greed will bring out the best competition they’ll ever experience as legit IP owners defend their rightful creation. If all else fails, the defender may decide that “two can play at this game” and give the thief a serious content beat down.

In the end the best, honest & most persistent site will win.

This article is not intended as legal advice. Always consult with an attorney.

Tags: copy cat, copyright, dmca, infringement, ip, plagiarize, steal, take down