Site Copying

Someone has recently taken a site of mine and copied it page for page while altering the layout and content within the site. This is my companies portfolio and grant they are using their own work in their portfolio, they are using our home page images / ideas / site content / navigation / and web forms. It is so closely matched they even copied layout of the portfolio, down the drop shadow on the images.

I have contacted the company and they are unwilling to change anything. I have thought about updating our site, but I am afraid this company will just continue to do so out of spite at this point.

We have done nothing to this company besides firing them for what we felt were overcharging for services. (which we paid for by the way.) This is the first consultation we have had since then so I was not aware of a "grudge".

Is this beside just morally wrong, any bit illegal? What would you do if you found a run down company using your hard work to their advantage?

Any advice is greatly appreciated.

Contact their hosting.

URLs would help here...

Unfortunately all you can do is name and shame to be honest. It sounds like they have changed the design just enough..

Originally Posted by Dan Unfortunately all you can do is name and shame to be honest. It sounds like they have changed the design just enough..

Yeah, I've been in the same situation a couple times and contacting the host did nothing. It happens and you've pretty much just gotta deal with it.

Post up the URL's and it will help us judge whether we feel they are the same or not!
I know people that have similar issues but when they've contacted the hosting company they've been very useful

We would rather keep from posting both our site and their site to the public. And as far as "name and shame" The more details we give about this company the more traffic I may be providing them. Bad attention is still attention.

It is not a situation where say we created facebook and they made a social network like myspace. Rather their site has our images such as social icons, banners, re worded content, exact match of navagation, styled portfolio, web forms, ...

If we were to change our site, completely redesign and develop, if their company did try to copy cat us again is their anything we could take action against?

People already said it: No. Unless you've got disposable income to spend on a lawyer that is geared towards copyright, then your only resolution is: either ignore it and move on.. Or you publicly oust them so that any future searches will include the fact that they continually stole work from you and makes people aware.

For what it's worth: Just because you give the site traffic doesn't mean that's a bad thing. Using the power of Google and forums, you could honestly do more harm than good for them. It's happened here with various users that have either scammed people out of work or just didn't do the work after being paid.

Feel free to google "Anthony Bullock" to see a prime example.

Well thank you all for your 2 cents, We will just brush this off unless there is more that this company plans to do. I will likely join the forum with a real alias.

Offtopic; We can change your username for you. http://www.talkfreelance.com/showthread.php?t=40264

That's really annoying considering the effort you have invested.