What to do if someone copies your website

[kevinper]

4) Contact a copyright lawyer and ask for legal advise on possible action. While often difficult to pursue, penalties for copyright violation are severe.

If this other website is in the US then it is very easy for a lawyer to pursue. A good internet lawyer will even take this on a contingency basis because the money for the infringment is quite good.

Also, start taking snapshots of this other website pages daily. The copyright infringments are daily fines.

And yes, I say hang 'em high.

[monarchanurag]

How to find the host provider of the website which copies ones website and what should be done if the country of copier is different.

[Peopleunit]

If it comes down to it, see if their website gets spidered by "the wayback machine" - in which case even though they may do a last minute revision on their site, you'll have a record of their infringement.

Once a suit is filed, you'll need some evidence, preferably from a third party, and The Wayback Machine can provide that evidence.

The Copyscape site noted earlier in this thread seems worthy for detecting future infringement but in your case you've already latched on to the varmints.

I'd create a single cease and desist letter and send it to ALL the parties of interest at once (CC the email to the website admin, their host, your lawyer, their domain registrar, Google, etc.).

Chances are the problem will remedied in short order. If the infringement has been in place for a lengthy period of time (as shown from previous spidered versions of their site on The Wayback Machine), you might be able to file a damages suit in addition to the infringement. I.e., any income they generated from their site can be presented as evidence of damages to you.

For international claims, I believe the registrar's involvement can have the site/domain revoked (shut down), regardless of their home country - I think.

[TrafficProducer]

Here's some links I've put together that may help you, good luck:-

Web Master Law. Legal issues for Web Masters

[perry321]

Send them a short e-mail telling them to drop that design or you will send an e-mail to Google and Yahoo, putting in a request to have them banned, and then to their hosting co. That is, if they already don't have their own.

Don't be polite about it. They know what they did. You don't be polite to crooks.

Done.

[danners02]

5) If totally stuck, change your content.

Disagree - you wrote it you keep it. You stated they reproduced pages you had not finished yet - this means Google will treat your pages as duplicates of theirs once you make your pages live (as they appeared second).