Ask YC: What to do when someone copies your text?

[inovica]

Hi there. They say that imitation is the highest form of flattery. We've just found a competitor (with a nicely designed site) who has taken our text and only slightly re-worded it. Most of it still reads the same as our site and I recognized it as it as it reads just like I write :) To be honest, they've created a good sales site (and I have no issues with competition) but its annoying that they couldn't think up their own ideas for their FAQs or text. Just curious to see what people here would suggest or do I just ignore it and push our own product/site as much as possible.?

[pg]

What we did was ignore it. It's annoying, but (a) there is not much you can do and (b) someone who has to copy your site is probably not that much of a threat.

[inovica → pg]

Thanks Paul. We've been in competition on various products before and its all been good, fair competition. This is a new one for me. Appreciate the advice and we'll just roll our sleeves up and carry on. In a sense, this has spurred us on today :) Thanks for a few people who sent me suggestions and best wishes privately

[patio11]

Absolutely nothing.

You are one paragraph of time in the hole on this already, but don't throw good time after bad. Every additional quanta of time spent on worrying about this or implementing (ineffective) solutions is time you are not using to make money.

[inovica → patio11]

Thanks. Thats pretty much what I'd thought. Absolutely disgusting though. I mean, look at the competition and try to improve on what they've done but word-for-word copying is low. Anyway, thanks. Going to get on with doing business!

[gtani]

http://freelanceswitch.com/freelancing-essentials/how-to-pre...

[RobGR]

Since they have a good design, steal it.