Webmaster stealing features off your site.

**Rich** · 02-07-04

Its my second day FT and I've got a feeling it's time to book an appointment with a solicitor

I came across a book price comparison website yesterday that uses the same method of updating the browser with fetched price details in real time that I created for my book site. I know this site never used to show its prices in this format. The client side code he uses isn't identical to mine, but it is close enough to make me quite sure he has either used mine as a basis and changed it to look different, or at least seen the feature on my site and recreated it for his.

I have written to him to request that he removes the functionality from his site but he has claimed it is his own work and 7 out of 10 programers would come up with the same solution. I know of no other website that updates in the same way. After I sent him the email, he visited the site but only looked at a couple of pages which reasures me that he has looked at the sources before.

I have replied to his email pointing out how ours was a unique solution and how his has been created since and shows clear similarities.

Assuming he is going to keep denying he has used my site as inspiration, where can I go with this next? Also, what should I be doing to protect other features I create from being copied?

Any suggestions would be gratefully recieved and they might just calm me down abit

Thank you
(Without prejudice)

**Barry** · 02-07-04

What your url? (PM them both if you don't want to disclose them)

And:-

Unless he/she has actually stole your coding line for line you can't do anything and shouldn't really complain if its just the 'technique or principle' they have stolen.

Just stay focused on your own site (and be aware of your competition) it won't be the first or the last time you will encounter a site that has the same 'functionality' as yours.

Although I may change my opinion on your situation after seeing the urls.

**Rich** · 02-07-04

Its hard to give exact url's as both sites cashe the results they fetch and the method only shows up on the refresh of prices.

My site is www.bookkoob.co.uk. If you browse thru to a specific book page you should see how the prices from each store are added into the page once it's loaded. If the prices are already loaded there should be a button to refresh prices which will show you the process (unless the prices have been updated in the last hour, in which case you will have to view a diffeent book)

His site is www bookhead .co.uk (I don't want it to show as a link back here). Again if you browse to a specific book page you should see it updating in a similar way (its towards the bottom of the page so you may need to scroll down when the page loads)

I thought copyright law covered more than just exact duplication. Is it patents I should be looking at? I'm sure theres some way to cover an idea so as even if someone later comes up with the same idea you still have rights to it. The problem is this techniquie took a lot of hours to create and perfect and his solution is particually similar.

**uklejon** · 02-07-04

Hi Rich,

I feel for you as a very large US company has nicked some of my code..changed all the variables and used it on their site. I can;t really do much as they have changed the code a lot, but i know its the same thing!!!

Don;t quote me on this but....copyright covers you if someone copies you text,images,code verbatum.

With ideas i think you need to look at patent but that can be quite difficult.

I must admit I get inspiration from other sites i visit, i don;t however copy the idea, i try to improve on it and add it to my site with the limited knowledge i have.

Let us know how you get on. I'd be interested in how it turns out.

carol

**Barry** · 02-07-04

Hi rich

I thought it might be your bookkoob site that you were referring to, as I use (thanks for your generousity) your out put on my site http://books.zarr.co.uk/

I must agree that the system looks very similar to yours in terms of the 'principles' it uses. I don't think that the coding they have used looks like yours however.

I'd put it to the back of my mind and keep going with your own site, - it is bar far the better site.

If there is anything I can help you with to get your site ranking higher - fire away. I have made a couple of quid using your comparison script and will be more than willing to help you out in return.

**999gi** · 02-07-04

Yeah sound a bit of a shaky case to me too.
After all are you really saying that everyone should have original thoughts. Every thing we do and think of is influenced by what we see and hear and while I know your situation is more specific I dont think its specific enough.

In another thread you are talking about doing something like oddschecker, which I see as being perfectly acceptable, but also little different to what this guys seems to have done to you.

Hes seen your site (I guess) although may not remember and thought - thats a good idea, maybe I should do somthing like that.

We all do that sort of thing every day dont we.

**uklejon** · 02-07-04

Just thought........if you come up with another unique idea try to do all the coding server side if possible so that all the browser sees is HTML.

My other half is putting together something he thinks is very unique and is doing just this......everything is run ASP or ASP.net so that its server side. All that appears in the browser is HTML!!

carol

**Rich** · 02-07-04

On the patent office newcomers guide, if you say you have come up with a new piece of software it advises you to look at copyright and patents. But when you look at patents it says

An invention is not patentable if it is:
a discovery;
a scientific theory or mathematical method;
an aesthetic creation such as a literary, dramatic or artistic work;
a scheme or method for performing a mental act, playing a game or doing business;
the presentation of information, or a computer program.

So that isn't a line worth going down and, in anycase, you have to patent it before it has been made public.

Under copyright rules it gives the owner rights to prohibit: -

making an adaptation of the work, such as by translating a literary or dramatic work, transcribing a musical work and converting a computer program into a different computer language or code (link

and it only has to be a small portion of the work that is used without permission (link).

But that still requires me to show he used my idea as a basis. There are a lot of things he does in the same way, starting with a hidden ifame, which is written by the page by javascript (which he doesn't need as he doesn't support non-javascript browsers). The iframe then calls a html page of javascript fragments (called getlive in my case, getresults in his) which updates the form elements and calls a javascript function called sorttable to tidy things up. It will be hard to prove.

I did think about the comparison with oddschecker, but I think having the idea of an betting odds comparison website - which maybe I did think about after coming across one of the existing comparison sites - is different to taking a specific feature off a site and rewriting it. I know the book comparison website came to me in the early hours one morning, though that was probably triggered by thinking about comparison sites for other markets. I would never say that was my own idea so no-one else is allowed to make a book price site.

I guess my concern is because I have other features on the site that have taken weeks to develop and optimise and I want to make sure they are protected from copying, specifically the comparison cart. Unfortunately, alot of it has has to run as javascript to give rapid feed back to the user. I've had contact from users saying how useful it is and saying Froogle and Dealtime had told them it was too complicated when they had asked for similar functionality, so I know it will probably come under the scrutiny of other developers.

Thanks for the reponses anyway, its good to have some independent views.

**Green2K** · 03-07-04

Although you can't patent a software program as a whole, you can often patent specific parts of it.

In the affiliate game, it is highly unlikely to be worthwhile. Filing costs are about 12k and you have to be prepared to challenge any infringements; the granting of a patent does not guarantee its validity!

Green2K.

**HeresJonny** · 03-07-04

Originally posted by Rich
I know of no other website that updates in the same way.

I know of several book price comparison sites that work like this so be careful .... after all its very easy to do.

**Rich** · 03-07-04

Any change you could give me some examples so I can educate myself? Post, PM or email me: stuff at bookkoob.net

Thank you.

**HeresJonny** · 04-07-04

Hi

Try
http://www.123pricecheck.com
http://www.best-book-price.co.uk/
http://www.find-book.co.uk

There also quite a few others (some of them mine) that do the same things with other goods, not just books.

Jon

**Rich** · 04-07-04

Maybe I didn't make it clear what I meant. Those three examples all fetch the details for all stores before displaying the results. This means, if any store takes a while to respond, the user has to wait to see any results.

The way I coded it, it updates the page as the results come in so as the user gets useful results as quickly as possible and can easily see whats happening.

Luckily there are some server side bits that he has either missed or they are as hard to code in ASP.net as they are in PHP.