Matthew Searle answers common legal queries about new media.

Q: I have spent several months creating a web site for my business. Two weeks after it went live on the internet, a rival company published an almost identical site. What can I do to stop them?

A: You need to act quickly to nip this in the bud. A strongly-worded letter, enclosing a formal document for the rival company to sign and return, is probably the best course.

In the document the rival company would, among other things, promise not to let this happen again.

There is probably not much mileage in seeking compensation, although the threat may be useful.

You could, however, demand a contribution to any legal costs.

I am assuming several things:

1. That the rival's site reproduces such a substantial part of your site there has clearly been some copying. Remember, there is no copyright in an idea, only in the expression of an idea.

There needs to have been copying of the words and/or images on your site, not just the concepts behind it.

2. That you do actually own the copyright of your own site. If you use a design company to design your site, it will own the copyright unless you get it to sign a written transfer to you. This applies even if you have paid the design company for their work.

3. Are you certain that the rival company has deliberately copied your site? This may not necessarily be the case.

I had a situation several years ago where a competitor had produced a suspiciously-similar advert to my client. It turned out the competitor's advertising agency had done the copying without the competitor's knowledge.

Innocence is not a defence to copyright inf-ringement but do bear this possibility in mind before making accusations in your opening salvo.

If the letter and formal document route is unsuccessful, you will need to consider taking your rival to court.

If you are successful in proving that the rival company has copied your site, the court will normally issue an injunction ordering the rival to take down the site and refrain from doing anything similar in the future.

Compensation might be awarded but, in my experience, this is unlikely to be a significant amount. You should get your legal costs (or some of them) paid by the rival company.

Do not underestimate how time-consuming and expensive it will be to bring such a case. You need to weigh this up against your chances of success and the damage the rival's site is doing to your business.

It may also be worth contacting the company which hosts the rival's web site. If you can provide sufficient evidence, the host may force your rival to remove the infringing material.

You might want to check the meta tags used on the rival's site. Meta tags are hidden words and phrases describing the site and its contents which the owner of the site attaches to it.

Search engines use meta tags to decide whether the site is rel-evant to the person for whom a web search is being carried out.

The meta tags system is clearly open to abuse.

It is not unknown for businesses to try to divert business to their own sites by including in their meta tags the names of their competitors.

Both the American and UK courts have clamped down on this practice. In your case, you might just want to check your rival's meta tags just to see if its "crime" was even worse than you first thought.

Matthew Searle is a partner in Lewes-based solicitors and investment managers Adams and Remers.