A couple of months ago I received a telephone call from one of my clients telling me that their website had been copied by a competing company – I thought I’d follow it up this weekend and to my surprise, the copycat website is still live.

Our client (www.lsswaste.co.uk) have had a website live with us for about 2 years. The website has been a huge success for them and has started to get some great traffic levels.

A couple of months back they advised us that a competitor in another part of the country had essentially ripped off the design and the content (actually there were some interesting oversights by Crown Wastes’ web designer – he even failed to update the name of the MD of the company – it was a direct copy of LSS’ website). If you’d like to compare the designs, click here to see the offending website (we took a copy in case they decided to replace their rip off with something original).

Copyright infringment is an ever present inconvenience in business. At its best it can be a distraction away from the running of your business, at its worst it can cost thousands of pounds to fight. I asked James Sarjantson, Head of Commercial and Intellectual Property at Levi Solicitors in Leeds to give me a 5 minute guide to what to do if you suspect you’ve been copied:

If you do find that someone has “ripped off” your web site or your branding, here is what you should do:

• Consult a solicitor: He or she will be able to advise you on the appropriate steps to obtain redress. With the help of your solicitor, you will need to consider exactly which of your rights have been infringed: has the infringer been using your registered trade mark? have they mocked up their website to make it look very similar to yours? have they copied your computer code in creating their website? A number of unlawful acts, such as trade mark infringement, “Passing Off” or copyright infringement, may have been committed.
• Do not take matters into your own hands by threatening all-comers with legal action without taking your own legal advice first. If you threaten to sue someone for trade mark infringment when you are not entitled to do so, you may end up being sued yourself for making what is known as an “unlawful threat”.
• Ensure that you own the rights that you claim have been infringed. If consultants have been engaged to develop designs or logos for you, ensure that you own the rights to them, rather than the consultant. Register any important trade names as registered trade marks.
• Ask your solicitor to write an intial “letter of claim” to the infringer, setting out the basis of your claim against them. Often, a threatening letter from a law firm is enough in itself to stop the infringing acts happening again and may prompt the payment of monetary damages by the infringer to you. If it does not, consult with your solicitor about whether to issue formal legal proceedings against the infringer, or whether alternative dispute resolution procedures (such as the Domain Name dispute resolution procedures) may be available.

Picking up on an important point above – I looked at the source code for both the LSS Waste and Crown Waste websites and was not surprised to find a like for like copy of Chapter Eight’s source code. More worryingly Crown Waste have also copied Chapter Eight’s flash panel and other elements which are our own copyright.

So over the coming weeks, we’ll be following James’ advice and making sure that this sort of blatant rip off doesn’t stay around for very long. I’m also hoping that the publicity of this article and the fact it will shortly start listing alongside Crown Wastes’ entry in natural search results will be enough to deter them from continuing this fruitless exercise. I’ll keep you all posted.