Website Design and Content Stolen, Here's What You Can Do

You spend time, effort and resources to create a Design for Your Website and then explore all creativity to fill Your Website with Content. You go back home and bask in the satisfaction of a job well done, only to realize the next day that Your Website Design and Content have been stolen by a competitor! The question that nags you most is, What to do? Here's the solution.

• Inform: Send an e-mail to the owner of the site which has copied Your Website Design and Content. Though some may be of the opinion that an act of theft should be met with no leniency, informing the owner of the concerned website eliminates a case of inadvertent duplication. It might be an eventuality that the owner is not aware of the duplication.
• Alert The Hosting Server, Advertisers And Google: Notify the server hosting the concerned website along with its advertisers and Google. No reputed Host or advertiser would run the risk of association with a plagiarizing company. Google is especially intolerant about such unfair activities.

• Know When You Are A Victim: Use sites like Google Alerts and Copyspace to know when Your Website Design and Content have been stolen.

• Take Legal Action: If the theft was made consciously, the plagiarizing company usually does not revert back to mails and phone calls. Consult your lawyer and do not hesitate to take legal action against the company.

Competition in the virtual markets and the knowledge that they are the future of commerce tempts a few companies into adopting such unfair means like Design and Content Theft. Steps against such companies should be taken to ensure that E-commerce remains free of such unfair tactics.

Precautions should also be taken to ensure the protection of Your Website's originality. Bring Your Website and its content under the protection of Copyright before they are duplicated. Copyright however, cannot protect you unless your Design and Content are duplicated in their entirety. Thus, Copyright has limitations of its own considering that this is the age of smart thieves. Your best bet against Design and Content Theft is thus to stay alert against such activities.