D_Blackwell - 8:29 pm on Sep 29, 2009 (gmt 0)

Site A writes a step-by-step article on how to reset a popular MP3 player.

I would say no. Irritating yes, but everybody takes everybody else's good ideas and puts on a fresh coat of paint. The step-by-step is merely factual information. All you have to hang your hat on is presentation and genuine copyright protected content; actual text in an actual article. Is it an article, or factual filler? The more 'factual', the more 'step-by-step', the freer anyone is to use the information and reformat to suit their needs.

If it is a rewrite of an article, then the opinion of lawyer is what you need. The better the rewrite, the closer it is to being 'new'. We do this all the time; in addition to writing our own stuff. If someone does something we like, that we haven't thought of, we 'reverse engineer' and do our best to do a better job and raise the bar. They may know we got the idea from them and followed along. However, our version will not use any exact language that is not generic, and we will not reuse any 'signature phrasing'. It is new, unique - and better (even if we did get the idea from them and wish we had thought of it first).