WebSite Stolen - What can my friend do ?

Hi All,

Since the early part of this year, a friend of mine has been developing a website for a client. This was a pretty informal arrangement in that there was no formal contract for this project, but having said that there was always an implied belief between the parties that once the site was live that there would be some renumeration received by my friend from their client. And, also that there maybe a role to be played in the ongoing support and development of the site.

Anyway, the website was registered with a domain reseller earlier in the year and was hosted on a set of servers. All paid for by my friend.

The site recently went live and the client was happy.

The client then asked if the clients friend could help with the said development of website. My friend agreed and gave the clients friend access to the development / testing servers.

The client's friend then stole the website code and deployed the code to a different set of servers.

Well !! or So !! I hear you say no worries the nameserver addresses for the production servers are pointed to the original hosting site. No !!

My friends client had deviously gone to the IEDR on the advice of his friend and created a NIC-HDL account and changed the nameservers at the highest level.

So, the site allbeit the dev site was now sitting on a different set of nameserver bypassing the live site.

Pros and Cons.
The main loss to my friends client was his database of names for their forum.

The net gain for my friends client is that he has a completely freely developed website and has managed to cut my friend out of the equation.

I don't want to mention the name of the .ie website because I don't want my friends client to gain any publicity out of this site from askaboutmoney.com. I can however, give the name of the dev site if anyone is interested.

Can anyone with any legal knowledge tell me what my friend could do to challenge this client ?

He has been to the domain reseller and the IEDR and they are saying that a legal challenge is necessary.

My friend has a email dossier of all that has gone on and also has conversations in email between the client and his developer friend. And, this set of information implicates both of them in this very sorry affair as having stolen the code / design of the site.

I think more than anything my friend wants to cause his client a bit of disruption and ethically the website that has been developed for the client is supposedly of such integrity that the client should not really be allowed to trade or perform under the remit that this site sets out to be.

It would be very interesting to know if any legal eagle out there would be interested in taking on such a case.

My friend has the dev site and it can be seen that at this time it is a complete replica.

Many Thanks

iewcisteal
;-)

This case is likely to resolve itself in one of two ways:

1. The person who originally wrote the code for this website may own copyright or may have other IP rights in the work. If so, he can seek to take it back. He can say there was an implied agreement that the 'thief' would licence this work or buy this work from him, that the conduct of the 'thief' vitiates this contract and that he is entitled to terminate the deal, take back all of his work product and assert copyright over the code

OR

2. The person who originally wrote the code did so as a servant\agent\contractor and all IP rights rest with the 'thief' who commissioned the work. In this case, the argument to make is that there was an implied term in the agreement that the person who wrote the code etc. would ultimately be paid for it, and that - absent agreement on a specific sum - he is now entitled to be paid on what is called a quantum meruit basis.

Obviously, argument 1 is more attractive for your friend. I could not hazard a guess, based on the limited information provided, as to whether he could bring home such a claim. Certainly, I would say that there is a claim of some sort to be made. I would also say that delay may prejudice such a claim - so he should act quickly.

I don't imagine that this is the sort of case that a solicitor would willingly undertake on a 'no foal no fee' basis - but in this economy who knows. A lot depends on whether the website in question is actually turning any sort of profit. If the result of the work has been to create a viable business, that is one thing. If this is a situation where there isn't an economic case for bringing litigation ( the dreaded words "it's the principle of the thing") then unless he is very annoyed and very wealthy, I would urge your friend to find some way to seek satisfaction other than recourse to the law.