Forum Moderators: not2easy
I have a site selling similar products as my competitors. All of my competitors are copying my written content, graphics, pricing etc. Some companies that are copying me have been around long before my company.
It seems to me the only way these companies can gain sales is by copying content off of my site. Many have tried to sell their products without copying content off of our site, ( my competitors offer more for the money) but it doesn't seem to work. So it's apparent that they have to copy some type of content off of our site in order to sell their product. In all cases they copy content verbatim.
We have looked into trademarks and copyright infringement but there seems to be a gray area due to the descriptive words being too generic or common requirements stated about the products. Keep in mind this isn't exactly standard requirement lingo. We always put our own twist on it. Which is why we feel this should be some type of legal issue. But this is for another forum.
So when I change some content I regain the sales that I'm losing, But all they do is find another word, phrase or element to copy off my site. Then I lose sales again. This seems to be the cycle.
Some of these companies offer more quantity for the same price and others offer more quantity for a cheaper price. But I don't think this is the issue. I think it has to do with the content. We don't put our product on sale or offer larger quantities to regain sales. We tweak our content. Then they'll copy something else off of our site.
We've had this content on our site for fours years and we've recently ran into this problem.
What do you think is happening?
A fight of copied content will be a long and costly one, especially since you state that they have been around longer than you.
If it were me,I would open a new site for your new content, but continue to update the site that they are copying with alternate content. You will retain sales on the original site and gain from the new site. It may keep you ahead of the competition.
Digital Millennium Copyright Act
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