A Competitor Copied My Website or Marketing. Copyright Claims for Businesses

The short answer, expanded

Copying a competitor's website is often copyright infringement, but not everything on a website is copyrightable and not every copyright claim is worth the same. The first task is to separate what was taken into three piles: protected expression that was reproduced, unprotected ideas or facts that were borrowed, and brand elements that raise trademark rather than copyright questions. The remedies differ for each.

The second task is to check the calendar. Federal copyright law rewards owners who registered early and limits those who did not. The timing rules below decide whether the case is about an injunction and modest actual damages or about statutory damages and fees.

What copyright protects on a website, and what it does not

Under 17 U.S.C. § 102(a), copyright protects original works of authorship fixed in a tangible medium, including literary works, pictorial and graphic works, audiovisual works and sound recordings. On a business website that covers the written copy, blog articles, product descriptions written by you, photographs you took or commissioned with an assignment, custom illustrations and icons, videos, and the underlying source code and design files. A brochure, a slide deck and an ad campaign are protected the same way.

Section 102(b) is just as important. Copyright does not extend to any idea, procedure, process, system, method of operation, concept, principle or discovery, regardless of how it is described. The Copyright Office's Circular 33 adds that names, titles, short phrases and slogans, familiar symbols, and mere listings of ingredients or facts are not registrable. In website terms:

• A competitor who adopts your idea of offering a three-tier pricing page has copied nothing protectable. A competitor who pastes your pricing page text has.
• Your tagline is probably too short for copyright. It may be a trademark.
• The facts in your industry guide are free for anyone. Your particular arrangement and wording of them are not.
• Stock photographs you licensed belong to the photographer or agency, not to you, and your license may not include the right to sue.
• The general look of a site, meaning color scheme, navigation structure and the fact that there is a hero image above three columns, is usually an unprotectable idea. The specific graphics inside it are protected, and a close imitation of the whole may be trade dress.

Do I need to register before I sue?

Yes, for a United States work. Section 411(a) bars a civil infringement action until registration of the claim has been made, and the Supreme Court held in Fourth Estate Public Benefit Corp. v. Wall-Street.com, LLC (2019) that registration is made when the Copyright Office registers the work, not when the application is filed. An owner who has not registered must apply and wait for the certificate, or pay for the Office's special handling to shorten the wait, before filing. If the Office refuses registration, the applicant may still sue after serving notice on the Register.

The requirement is a gate, not a limit on what you can recover for. Once registered, the owner can sue over infringement that began before registration. What changes with timing is the menu of remedies.

Why the date of registration decides what you can recover

Section 412 is the provision that catches most businesses. Statutory damages and attorney's fees are not available for infringement of an unpublished work that began before the effective date of registration, or for infringement of a published work that began after first publication and before registration, unless the work was registered within three months after first publication.

For a website that has been live for years and was never registered, that means a competitor who copied it last year can be sued for an injunction and for actual damages and profits, but not for statutory damages or fees, even if you register today. Registering today still protects you against infringement that begins after the registration date. For a new campaign, registering within three months of launch keeps every remedy open.

What a copyright case can award

Under 17 U.S.C. § 504(b), the owner may recover its actual damages plus any of the infringer's profits attributable to the infringement that are not already counted in the damages. The owner proves the infringer's gross revenue; the infringer must prove its deductible expenses and the share of profit due to factors other than the copied work. For a copied services website, actual damages are often the license fee the copier should have paid and the profits traceable to the copied pages, both of which call for careful proof.

If section 412 allows it, the owner may instead elect statutory damages under § 504(c): not less than $750 or more than $30,000 per work infringed, as the court considers just; up to $150,000 per work for willful infringement; and as little as $200 where the infringer proves it was unaware and had no reason to believe it was infringing. Each registered work is a separate unit, which is why registering a site's text, photographs and code as separate works can matter. Section 505 lets the court award costs and a reasonable attorney's fee to the prevailing party, again subject to section 412. Injunctions, impoundment and destruction of infringing copies are available in every case regardless of registration timing.

Getting the copy taken down without a lawsuit

Two tools work faster than litigation. The first is a demand letter to the competitor identifying the copied material with side-by-side screenshots and asking for removal by a date. The second is a notice under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, 17 U.S.C. § 512(c), sent to the competitor's web host or platform. A compliant notice includes a signature, identification of the copyrighted work, identification and location of the infringing material, your contact information, a statement of good-faith belief that the use is unauthorized, and a statement under penalty of perjury that the information is accurate and you are authorized to act. A host that wants to keep its safe harbor removes or disables the material promptly.

The competitor may send a counter-notification, after which the host restores the material in 10 to 14 business days unless you file suit. Section 512(f) makes anyone who knowingly and materially misrepresents that material is infringing liable for the resulting damages and fees, so a takedown notice is not a tool for removing a competitor's original content that merely resembles yours.

When copyright is not the right claim

If what the competitor took is your brand rather than your text, the claim is trademark infringement or unfair competition under the Lanham Act and Texas law. A copied logo can be both a copyrighted graphic and a trademark. A site that imitates your overall look so closely that customers think it is yours may support a trade dress claim under section 43(a), which requires showing that the look is distinctive and non-functional and that confusion is likely. The remedies on that side, including the infringer's profits and up to treble damages, are described in remedies in a trademark case under the Lanham Act, and the Texas claims in unfair competition and misappropriation claims in Texas.

If the competitor is a former employee or vendor who had access to your files, a confidentiality agreement or trade secret claim may reach material, such as customer data or internal pricing, that copyright never protected.

Where the case is filed and how long you have

Copyright claims belong exclusively to federal court. Under 28 U.S.C. § 1338(a), no state court has jurisdiction over a claim arising under the copyright laws, so a Dallas business sues in the Northern District of Texas and adds any Texas claims there under supplemental jurisdiction. The limitations period in 17 U.S.C. § 507(b) is three years from when the claim accrued. Because a website that stays online is copied anew with each reproduction, late discovery does not always end the case, but the three-year window shapes how far back damages can reach. The forum choice across IP claims is covered in where IP disputes get decided.

Example

Suppose a Dallas HVAC company launched a new website in 2023 with 40 pages of service copy written in-house and 60 photographs taken by its own marketing manager. It never registered anything. In 2026 a new competitor's site appears with 25 of those pages reproduced word for word and a dozen of the photographs. The company sends a DMCA notice to the competitor's host, which takes the pages down within days. The competitor then re-hosts them. The company registers the text as one work and the photographs as a group, waits for the certificates, and sues in federal court. Because the copying began before registration and more than three months after publication, statutory damages and fees are off the table. The case is for an injunction, the license value of the copy and the competitor's provable profits from the copied pages. Had the company registered in 2023, each copied photograph could have carried its own statutory award and the competitor would face the fee risk, which usually ends such a case at the first letter.

What to do this week

• Capture the copying: dated screenshots or a web archive capture of each copied page, alongside your original with its own publication date.
• Gather proof of authorship: drafts, file metadata, invoices to the designer or photographer, and any assignment agreements.
• Check who owns what. Content written by a contractor without a written assignment may not be yours to enforce.
• File copyright applications now for the works that were copied and for the ones that were not yet.
• Decide the order of letter, takedown and suit with counsel, because a takedown that is not well founded carries its own liability.

Tina Wysk represents Dallas businesses in copyright, trademark and unfair competition disputes in federal court; the practice is described at intellectual property disputes.