can you develop a Website that has already been developed?

C

Cityliving

Registered User
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Hey there,

Lets say for e.g. theres a great site (or at least an idea for one) and you come up with all your ideas and then when you look you find a very similar website already in existence but is either done badly or not being updated often any more.

Can you then set up a site yourself?

misleading and defamatory example removed - Brendan

Is there any legal resource I could check with?

With thanks
 
You can develop any website you like. Not sure if you mean copying the content and/or style of an existing (or defunct one)? That could have copyright/legal implications.
 
Well the eg I gave sort of explains what I mean.

The site I`m looking at doing really only can be done one way and it will be extremely similar and I dont want to get into any legal issues.

It will of course be programmed ourselves and we`ll have some difference but it will be hard to be that different? Annoying thing is that I had the idea, structure layout and design done and I found the site thats not being used but is almost everything I`ve thought of. It didnt turn up originally.

Thanks Clubman
 
You might want to check what sort of copyright and/or patents might cover the existing site and might impinge on your idea.

If the existing site is not used are you sure it's not because it is not a viable venture?
 
As clubman says, you can develop any site you wish as long as you dont take their copyrighted content. e.g. carbuyers guide is there, but so is autotrader, both do practically exact same thing but you dont have the same look and feel. Its normally one of the hardest challenges for designers to make them unique, however, as long as someone is using your site and not your competitors, does it matter?
 
I think it was not viable due to bad timing on their part but that the idea is more applicable now.

I will examine the rules to see whats allowed.

with thanks
 
Copyright law etc. I have examined some legal jargon and it seems that whats been said is essentially correct - that you can do pretty much what you want as long as all your programing and characters etc are original.

If anyone knows better please let me know
 
Other issues to consider would be trademark/deception. You can get into legal bother if your site causes confusion in the mind of customers of the other site. The naming, graphics and layout should be make it quite clear that you're somebody else.
 
Cityliving said:
...The site I`m looking at doing really only can be done one way and it will be extremely similar and I dont want to get into any legal issues. ...
Click to expand...

If its selling the same type of product or service then I can't see there would be a problem with that. However if you copy the design, look and feel, and/or content of the site. You can't do that.

I would have assumed you'd be changing the latter part though.
 
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