<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by lezimm:
I have a small business website. As part of the website one of my pages is an "on-line response form" giving my customers the option of responding to me by phone, or by using this "on-line form". Recently one of my competitors contacted me and informed me that I was violating their copyright by printing an "on-line form". The lay-out of my form is not like theirs, although some of the lines are similar since we are in the same business and need to get the same type of information. Is the IDEA of an "on-line form" for our customers to respond by, something that can be copyrighted? They are writing letters to sites I was linked with telling them I am guilty of copyright infringement and demanding that I remove my site from the web. Already I have lost a major linking site because of these letters. Is this infringement on my part, or not??<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
Dear alleged infringer:
It is possible to copyright text, graphics, layout etc. of an online form but not a thought or idea. Maybe they think that they are legends in their own minds. Since your layout is different and your text is somewhat different, this does not appear to constitute a copyright infringement. On the www I have seen thousands of these types of forms and many from competing companies look exactly the same like mirror images. Ask them to provide you with a copy of their copyright registration and their on-line form published work registered with the Federal government as proof and indicating that their online form is copyright registered and protected. Send them a snail mail letter but also use their own online form that they accused you of stealing to do this. I doubt that they even registered the work with the Copyright Office. If they did not, they have a very slim chance of prevailing. If they did, you are still protected because your form is not an exact duplicate of their form nor was your form copied from their form. If their online form is part of an ecommerce section that has photos and prices that you took off their website then that is wrong and infringement. Many website owners pay photographers to take photos of the products and hire a website programmer to set up the shopping cart section for on-line ordering. Then other competitors just download the info and have a replicating site for free with some minor changes. This action is stealing and copyright infringement.
Depending on the content of the letter that this competitor is sending out to the different website owners, you may have a claim against them for libel, slander, defamation, economic losses etc.
An idea that I have that is not copyrighted, is to contact your website hosting company and have them look at both ( yours and your competitors) online forms and give you their opinion.