Copying a template illegal?

I copied another website to sell some e-books and make some money. I use Adwords to get traffic.
The owner of the site I copied it from, mailed me and said he's gonna charge me and his lawyers will bring it to court blablabla.

He also said that Google will permanently ban my Adwords account.

Is he just talking cr4p, or do I have to worry?

I would apologize to him after you have switched your template to something other than his...

Simply put yes, he can sue you (doesn't mean he will win), but the adwords account will most likely be banned if he brings it to Google and they investigate.

Look at the bottom of his website and look for the copyright information. If he is using a free template from someone or another website then you should be okay to continue using the same template. If it is copyrighted then either he owns the copyright and template OR some company designed the website and owns partial or full copyright on the design/layout.

It all boils down to if he wants to bring any trouble your way. Google will usually side with people like him instead of you, sorry.

Why did you go to the bother of copying a site when you can find 1000s of templates for FREE!

Are you crazy all that to try and sell two bit e-books!

If he actually had it designed, yes he can definitely sue you.

Probably falls under intellectual property laws.... best is to apologize, tell him that you just admired the site so much, and didn't realize it would be an issue (flattery) switch templates and move on. Hopefully he won't pursue any further and everyone lives happily ever after

If template is created by him or he obtained it created for himself exclusively then he can bring the matter to the court. So first you need to identify that either its a free template in which he created modifications or any custom template by designer? Looks you are trying to compete in same or similar type of e-book that's why he come to know that you copied his template or you are using template images from his hosting???

Thanks

If it is his design and you caused him monetary losses he can sue you for damages as well. I would take your site down asap. and also block archive.org in your robots.txt file and then query your site from there to make it remove the cache right away.

I also suggest you pause your ad campaigns. Now, if it's a free template he might just be blowing smoke up your ass to scare you off.

OP, Yes Yes its 100% illegal but, Don't get panic.. Talk to the person by asking apologies (i.e you're a newbie, completely new to this field, unknown mistake, etc.. etc..) and also get him time (for changing into free templates) then everything will be alright! - No worries Be happy

Cheers!
Bart

If you're going to steal someone elses template make sure it's for sale on a site like Themeforest (You can find tons in the download section). That way the designer can't really tell if it was legitimately bought.