Someone has 'borrowed' my website content...

glitch

glitch

glitch

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Today I found out that my small business has a new competitor in the market. Now, I've got no problem with another business in the market as there's plenty of room for everyone, but what I do have a problem with is that they've decided to borrow some of my content and could be seen as passing themselves off as us.

They've basically ripped the entire contents of our FAQ page, which were written from scratch, along with some other unique information from our website. In addition to this they are using our company name as a strapline to theirs - it effectively sits underneath their logo and company name/URL.

We're quite lucky in that our company name describes exactly what we do and our website URL is the same as the company name, which helps when people find us on Google. But our new competitors also offer other products, so I'm seeing their use of our company name as a blatant attempt to cash in on our good name.

And before anyone suggests this might just be a complete coincidence, I'm afraid there's no chance it can be. The market in which we operate is a very small one and there's less than 10 companies operating within it. And to put the icing on the cake - this new company is being operated by one of my old customers, so he knows only too well where the information has come from.

So what can I do?
 
I'd prefer to keep them both anonymous. Let's assume this is a purely hypothetical question and I'm just looking for advice as to what I should do in such a situation.

Stuff like if I ought to be collecting 'evidence' that their website has 'my' content, what the best ways of doing that would be, who I could take it to, what I could do with it, etc.
 
chuck us an url or two so we can nosey... :p

Trading Standards I think would be the people to go to with this. WHOIS the offending domain, too.
 
If they are hosted in the USA, with a US company, you may be able to find a DMCA complaint letter template online and send that to their host.
 
I'd send him a friendly email listing what you believe to be copyright infringements and ask politely for him to remove said content. Always best to start off with a friendly request. If he doesn't comply, then you can start looking at further action.
 
KoR said:
I'd send him a friendly email listing what you believe to be copyright infringements and ask politely for him to remove said content. Always best to start off with a friendly request. If he doesn't comply, then you can start looking at further action.
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This ^

Be nice but tell him in no uncertain terms that the content has been blatantly copied from your website and he has 48 hours to remove said content or you will start legal proceedings.
 
daz said:
If they are hosted in the USA, with a US company, you may be able to find a DMCA complaint letter template online and send that to their host.
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It's a .com URL (with a .co.uk redirect) but hosted by 123-reg.co.uk.

KoR said:
I'd send him a friendly email listing what you believe to be copyright infringements and ask politely for him to remove said content. Always best to start off with a friendly request. If he doesn't comply, then you can start looking at further action.
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That was going to be my most likely next step, but I'd like to prepare myself in case he decides to ignore my request.

What's the best way to 'prove' that there's an active website with 'my' content on there? Because I'm going to assume that I'll need to be able to do that should this all go sour?
 
I' take full page screenshots of the two webpages in question aswell.

First action would be a friendly email: 'all content is copyright business name etc............'
 
Not an easy one to resolve :( a company I helped start up had this problem... literally they copied our FAQ, used a name very close to ours and even ripped images off our website... they ignored polite requests to cease and desist and even laughed in our faces... this last bit backfired on them tho and gave us the leverage to get them taken down through legal channels... I don't think we would have managed otherwise without spending ourselves out of business in legal action agains them.
 
legal action is very expensive and in my experience often the threat of it is sufficient but you are right to collect evidence from start to finish.
keep copies of all communications including times, dates a brief description of any telephone calls ect.

so if push comes to shove you are in a position to shove hard.

good luck in getting this resolved.
 
The minute you publish content that is your online, it is copyrighted and no one has any right to copy it.

So you are well within your right to take legal action against them for copyright infringement.

Send them an e-mail asking them to take it done, or you'll take legal action.

You can be sure they'll take it down and if they don't either take legal action or seek out help from their hosting company (Dispute Resolvement).
 
suarve said:
I' take full page screenshots of the two webpages in question aswell.
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Would a screenshot be of any use? It's relatively easy to mock something like that up and make it look like whatever you want it to.

suarve said:
First action would be a friendly email: 'all content is copyright business name etc............'
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Friendly email will be the first action, but I want to make sure I'm prepared for when it all starts to kick off.

Say I had to prove that their website was copying ours, how can I document that? I'm struggling to think of anything that couldn't be faked...

Rroff said:
Not an easy one to resolve :( a company I helped start up had this problem... literally they copied our FAQ, used a name very close to ours and even ripped images off our website... they ignored polite requests to cease and desist and even laughed in our faces...
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That's really quite annoying to hear. I'm glad it got resolved in the end though.

Although I've got a funny feeling this might all go the same way. I know this guy must be expecting a call or an email to tell him he's being bang out of line as there's no conceivable way he could have thought he'd be able to get away with it. Which makes me think he's just going to ignore my polite requests and it's going to get heated.

taliesyn said:
Passing off is illegal in the UK. Seek legal advice.
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Legal advice will be sought anyway, but I'm not sure about this whole 'passing off' thing.

Is using our company name as part of their 'identity' considered passing off?

Evilreg said:
legal action is very expensive and in my experience often the threat of it is sufficient but you are right to collect evidence from start to finish.
keep copies of all communications including times, dates a brief description of any telephone calls ect.
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Any idea how I can collect proof of their website being in the state that it is now (i.e. with our 'stuff' all over it) that would stand up to legal scrutiny?
 
To try and explain what has actually happened without giving too much away, here's a rough explanation:

Let's assume that our company is called 'Mittens for Kittens' and we sell mittens to fit kittens. Our URL is the same as the company name and our FAQ pages were written from scratch and explain how the company operates.

An old customer of ours has now decided to create a company called 'Cat Gloves' and is using 'Mittens for Kittens' as a strapline underneath the company name on their website and promotional material and has lifted our FAQ pages word-for-word.

NB. We haven't trademarked our company name.

whitecrook said:
wget --mirror ?
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I'm awfully sorry, but I have no idea what that means and Googling doesn't shed any light on the matter.

Can you explain in simple terms so I might understand?
 
whitecrook said:
http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/packages/wget.htm

you can download that proram call wget and run
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I couldn't make any sense of the information on the 'official' website but I eventually found a very useful guide which proved ideal for my non-technical needs.

Thanks for the initial recommendation, whitecrook.

Latest news is that my new best friend has agreed to remove all trace of our copyrighted information and to drop the use of our company name on their website and marketing literature, but we're still awaiting said changes to be made.

wonder_lander said:
How about something like this if your site and it's content are listed in the past, eg before they registered the domain. http://www.archive.org/web/web.php
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Good thinking!
 
May be worth sending them an email and asking them to confirm receipt and confirm their intention of removing the content within a certain timeframe. Encourage them up by creating a [email protected] / .co.uk email address and sending the request via this.
 
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