The company I work for has been recently alerted to the fact that a competitor website has copied several of our pages of written content and pasted into their website. All that is different is that they have removed our company name and replaced it with their own. They have also taken a few of our images and pasted them on their own website as well not even caring to remove the alt tag description. Should we call them and tell them to remove it? Get our lawyer involved? Do we have nothing? Can anybody here offer up some insight and a course of action we should take for something like this? Thanks in advance.
You can ask them to remove it, or file a DMCA with their webhost. Just Google to get a DMCA template form.
If you want to be nice you can have your lawyer draw up a "Cease and desist" letter. Chances are that they will respond to that, however it's not guaranteed. If you want to take the more aggressive route you can do the following: 1. File DMCA complaint with their host (WHOIS information should provide info) 2. File DMCA complaint with all the major search engines. This will likely get their website removed from the search engines, basically making it impossible for them to get organic traffic. 3. Sue them for copyright infringement. I'm not sure what Canadian laws are regarding this, but you should have some legal backing for the infringement, and it will hurt them where it counts - their pockets! Although it might be costly for you to persue.
I've always wondered what you could do if someone steals your content. Thanks for the info about sending a complaint to the site host.