I've had my web site up since the beginning of this year. Before that I had been working on it about 3 months prior to set up the programming and such.

Recently I noticed a lot of outside links coming from a thread from a paticular site. I went to check it out and they were having a big debate about me "ripping" or stealing from their design. The thing is that they don't have their design up anymore... they have a whole new design. They are still discussing what should happen to me.

I want to make it clear that there are strong color/layout resemblences, I did not steal it from them and several people I have talked to say it's not as much a copy then go.com is to lycos.com. My point I'm trying to make is that even though I've talked to people during the development of my site and have early sketches proving that I did not copy, could this turn legal? I think I can deal with hatemail and blacklists but I do not have the funds to turn this into a legal battle. I was already planning on a site redesign but it is still a month or so away. Has anyone else had a similar problem? With their version of their site not even online anymore I don't think they could sue me more then I could sue them...

Geoffrey Smith
http://www.copperminedesign.com

Originally posted by OpenBSD
With their version of their site not even online anymore I don't think they could sue me more then I could sue them... Personally, I wouldn't worry too much about being sued over it. It's a good clean design, but it's not particularly unique; primarily a variation of the common 3-column layout. Without seeing their color scheme or graphics it's hard to say how close they are in those areas. But in any case especially if you do have documentation of the development procedure I wouldn't worry about too much about legal entanglements. Of more concern might be any damage to your professional reputation, but it's a big world and it's hard to imagine you'd suffer much from that either, unless someone decided to organize some kind of campaign to "bring you to justice!"

By the way I'm not a lawyer, but I played one in the school play.

I've seen about five cases and have actually attended a couple of court cases with just this very thing (not cases against me, just watching lawyers work :-) . Most of the time they are blown off unless you blantly download there graphics and pawned them off as your own. You could even go to such lengths as to pixel for pixel (almost) copy theirs as long as you designed it without taking their images. The law still isn't very clear on everything yet. Just be ethical, but don't let a bunch of people scare you.

The problem is even if you win you loose. The bad reputation it causes and you still have to go to court to defned yourself and that costs a lawyer, time away from work etc.