Legal issues with copyright, please help

Business
1

Some time ago I bought a PHP platform that my entire website is based on and it turned out to be copied from another famous site. I guess some programmer who worked for the original site sold it to me. BTW, I have some papers that they sold me this.

After I bought it I rewrote ~30% of this it, changed the design to customize it for my needs. The site is paid for subscribers and has a good traffic.

I see that the original and mine sites use the same css styles, the same JavaScript libraries… The layout is similar in some places. Of cause I rewrote something and changed the design/graphic but a professional can compare both sites and find that they are based on the same code.

Is there any way for me to avoid problems?

Is it possible to modify it so nobody can see that these sites are relatives? Like rename css, Javascript libraries?

2

Before you start getting too worried, you need to check that it really is a copyright infringement. Just because it was copied, that doesn’t mean that the copying is unauthorised. It could be that the people you bought it from had a deal with the “famous site”.

Have you thought of asking the people you bought it from?

Mike

3

right, I asked them - they said they bought the script from the company that made it for the original site and then significantly rewrote it …
what should I do?

4

Get them to give you a statement to the effect that they own the rights to the rewritten script, and that they authorise you to use it. Get that in writing.

If they refuse to do that, ask them why.

Mike