Some time ago I bought a PHP (crowd sourcing) platform that my entire website is based on and it turned out to be copied from another famous site. I guess some programmer who worked for the original site sold it to me. BTW, I have some papers that they sold me this. After I bought it I rewrote ~30% of this it, changed the design to customize it for my needs. The site is paid for subscribers and has a good traffic. I see that the original and mine sites use the same css styles, the same JavaScript libraries.. The layout is similar in some places. Of cause I rewrote something and changed the design/graphic but a professional can compare both sites and find that they are based on the same code. Is there any way for me to avoid problems? Is it possible to modify it so nobody can see that these sites are relatives? Like rename css, Javascript libraries?
I asked the guys who sold me the script. They said they bought the script from the company that made it for the original site and then significantly rewrote it .... what should I do?
No threats, but imagine one day that famous site that I mentioned will find that someone else is using the code that was initially developed for them yes, I bought it legally and it was partly rewritten.. but it seems I may have some legal problems or I will have just to shutdown my site (I invested a lot of money, my time and work into it) what should I do?
There is no issue with modifying. You may only encounter problems if you un-authorisingly distributes their products.
The problem is that it turned out that my site is using the code that was initially developed for another site... the front was rewritten in most parts, except I can see some similar names for styles and some js libraries. But I suspect that the backend/DB part is the same.