rogerd - 8:53 pm on Aug 2, 2004 (gmt 0)

Roomy, is the company a well-established, "deep pockets" concern, i.e., one that might pay a few dollars to make you go away vs. risking bad publicity?

The financial award you are likely to recover (if you are lucky enough to recover anything at all) for a single article which was promptly removed probably won't justify hiring an attorney, and won't be likely to attract a lawyer based on a contigency fee. It never hurts to try, of course.

For something like this, often the most you can accomplish is to create grief for the offender by complaining to his web host, search engines, domain registrar, business partners, etc., with full documentation. Check out the rest of his site - has he ripped off other sites, do you think? If so, you might drop a note to the content owners; this will keep him busy, and if you are lucky one of the content owners will have in-house counsel (or a good lawyer buddy) who will file suit without warning.