intellectual-property, website, copyrightIs copying the design of an existing website or feature illegal? Either way, what problems might I run into if I do it?
I understand that the logo, products, and contents are a different story, but I don’t have a web designer to create my own website, and I’d like to start off with the base design of some of the great websites out there. For example, I could copy Amazon, eBay, or another popular site. I don’t have the abilities to build my system exactly like theirs, but I am curious of how similar I can make mine.
Copying the design of a website could get you in trouble on two fronts, both aspects, no surprise, of intellectual property: copyright and trademark.
Also, in this answer I’m assuming that you’re in the United States. If you’re in a country without an IP treaty, that could mean the rules are different.
#Copyright
Copyright is a little more likely, but you’d want to think about both of them. Copyrights protect artists, via protecting their artwork. A website is artwork, just as a book, architectural design, piece of music, or pattern on fabric are artwork. As such, it receives a copyright immediately upon creation. Registration is required to enforce said copyright, but every one could get a registration at any time (for the right price, that is). As such, it’s pretty important to avoid directly copying design (be that HTML or, arguably less seriously, CSS) without the proper license.
Companies like Amazon do have registered copyrights, and will more than likely enforce them.
#Trademark
Trademarks are a little bit different. It’s probably pretty easy to get around, and you’d more than likely only have problems if you were specifically doing this with the intention of imitating them, but trademarks protect consumers, via locking down branding. Virtually anything that makes a business feel like that business could be subject to trademark, as long as it’s not necessary to do that business. Names and logos are the most obvious examples of this, as you’ve covered, but it can extend on through some other mediums: a good example is the shape of a Coke bottle, or the color pink as used in fiberglass insulation.
If you copy another business’s website and use it as your own doing more or less the same thing, it could be possible that a consumer would be confused and think they were dealing with that original business, when in fact they were dealing with you. In that case, it’s possible that you could be found to be infringing on their trademark.
Again, that’s pretty unlikely to happen, all in all, especially if you are in fact trying to make it look like you didn’t directly copy from them, but you should keep it in mind.
#Conclusion
I’d say you have, let’s say three and a half, good options, and copying directly isn’t one of them:
The short answer to your question is that it depends. I think from what you said about understanding that you cannot use logos, products and contents your safe with what you want to do.
The thing is that what you are trying to do is not very practical, like others advised you might want to go hire a web designer. That depends on exactly what you want to do.
For example you might like the layout of the page your reading right now. You can right click and find that you can see the source of the page. You can copy it and paste it into your own HTML editor, then view it in a browser and find that it is severely broken. You could spend some time stripping out stuff and maybe find that you have the layout. The problem is that this page, like all great website pages is a dynamically created page. The website is an application, there are no documents stored on a server, their are essentially templates, data to fill it, CSS to lay it out, and java script to make it work. You need basically the same skill set to copy it as you do to build it.
Would it be illegal to copy this page and strip it down. yes, but nobody is really going to care. The layout on this page is common, there are likely millions of sites that use the same lay out. It is a header, a footer and three columns between them. Simple stuff that is much easier to find on a site that will give you the layout for free, with the CSS to lay it out, and some instructions and explanations as to what is going on.
The features of a website again it depends. All sites feature hyperlinks and sometime in the early days some company had a patent on hyperlinks. So technically everyone was infringing on the patent, but nobody was successfully sued for doing so. If it is a common feature used on many sites just go ahead and roll your own, or find the code for the feature at one of the many sites that have that sort of thing. You may find that you can get it free or maybe have to pay license to use it.
The only way your going to find legal issues is if you are seriously infringing on a site, by doing something like selling books on a site that looks a lot like Amazon on a domain like Amazonn.com. If you like the style of a site, you can mimic that style, and be just fine as long as you are not mimicking the site in such a way that they notice and object too. Even in that case copyright infringement, trademark infringement, patent infringement is not infringement until the gavel falls and a judge says that it is infringement. So unless you are trying to pull some BS at others expense, exploring, looking, a little copying of HTML and CSS is perfectly fine.
Copying a website really depends on the industry that you are in and if it follows the same areas that a competitor is in. I know some areas where people will use e-commerce type models and apply it to a web application that is completely not related but helps enhance the site. You can copy concepts as those are abstract ideas and can not be copyrighted or trademarked but if the site has very similar placement of certain features and uses same typography in such areas, larger companies will eventually pay attention to smaller rising competitors. I would say to be careful but don’t let IP be the thing that detracts you from creating and designing your website.
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