Site design Stolen!

What can be done if someone blatantly steals your website design and uses it for thier own site?
Sadly its a member here who has done it and refuses to be reasonable about it.
Its not just a close copy its almost exact.
Oh and they stole the script nand now claim its their own! How, a coder I hired sold it as his own!
The user reckons they have now registered the script so has legal rights to it.

 

Well, Get the coder into it. Get him to say he made it and so forth, Unless he was a reseller of it.

Did you have copyright protection on your site? Did you pay/create the design yourself?

 

sorry to hear that mate

 

thats really sad, unless you have your design copyrighted,
u cant do anything i feel.

 

That is bad news.

 

Shis, i thaught this guys dissapeared.

 

The first thing you have to understand is that your site is copyrighted whether you've registered it or not. As such, you can contact the guy's host and file a DMCA takedown notice and have his site cut off. That should solve your problem.

Let me know if you have other questions.

Deena
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Any opinions are offered without knowledge of the specific law of your jurisdiction and with only the limited information provided in your post. No advice given here should be reasonably relied upon by you or any third party without consulting an attorney who is aware of all of the facts and law surrounding your situation. Any advice given here is not intended to create an attorney-client relationship in any way.

 

Thanks for that info(rep left)
How do I find out what host he is with?

Also I found this which is also usefull

 

You cannot always copyright a design or a "look and feel". Sometimes you have no choice but to be flattered by such imitation.

However, steal a script is definitely theft.

 

Go here http://whois.domaintools.com/ then type in his domain name.
Example hissite.com like that and then you will get the information you need on his register and host and also the abuse email adress

 

You should check out what the arrangement was with your webdesigner...

For the law of England and Wales it is as follows. (I don't know where you are)

http://www.netmag.co.uk/zine/design-culture/copyright-for-web-designers

 

Can we see the two sites?
Then we can judge it.

 

i suggest getting a legal team in, you can sue them for quite a bit of money e.g loss of revenue due to false representation of your brand, ive done it before. i got a UK lawyer and solicitor involved when our design was stolen (totally ripped and not even edited, trying to use our design and text to scam people)