My friend Peter posted this below on another forum and I also am interested in an answer as it is something I would like to know also. "Please help me know how to reverse engineer a web page and/or website without violating copyright rules. Reverse engineering is legal as long as it is done right. I know that most of the wording needs to be different than the original so that it does not come up on copy scape, but what about the images and the layout design? If the images are private images made by the person with the original site of course I can not use those images, but what if the images can be purchased by both the original site creator and myself, can I use them in this case? What about the names of the pages on the site? Can I use the same page names and same order of the pages? What about the layout look of the page? If I change the wording, but the colors of the sentences look the same as the original site and the introduction text, benefits bullet points, arrangement of the pictures, etc, make the reverse engineered page to appear very much like the original would that be a violation of copyright rules? Please give me some answers as I want to stay within the rules. Thank you"
Most likely this will be a violation of copyright, especially if the copied site works in the same field as the original one. Even though you might be able to purchase the same stock photos, etc. that is not what is copyrighted - the copyright is the site as a whole - ie the use of the imagery and the text in conjunction. It's very hard to upheld a copyright on the page-names etc. That is not really something I would worry too much about, unless they're very specific. As you can see, if you visit a few corporate sites and such, they're very much using the same page-names - and often also the same order in the menu - these things are not copyrighted themselves (again it has to do with the overall look). If you copy the menu, the colors, the images etc. and just do minor tweaks, it will be a breach of copyright, most likely - you could, in a worst case scenario, also be held accountable for potential customers visiting your site, and using your services in the belief they were visiting the original site - although this is hard to prove.
My scammy sense is tingling. You're basically asking about doing something sleazy - sleazier than dealers on street corners, sleazier than porn, sleazier than lawyers. Be original, and do something ORIGINAL, otherwise you aren't contributing jack **** to anyone. If you can't do that, maybe you shouldn't be making a website.