Legal Question in Business Law in California

Re: Web Master/Confidentiality/Competition

You can sue him if you can show damages. At least you can get an injunction. Feel free to contact me if interested in getting legal help.

Re: Web Master/Confidentiality/Competition

Yes, you would have legal standing to sue and/or get an injunction for this webmaster's illegal misuse of your image and likeliness for commercial gain, as well as possible copyright infringement damages.

Re: Web Master/Confidentiality/Competition

Three or four possibilities come to mind if you want to sue this rascal:

1. The most obvious cause of action is misappropriation of trade secrets under the Uniform Trade Secrets Act, Civil Code sections 3426 et seq. - while this isn't a slam dunk, very likely some of the material he's using could be deemed trade secrets.

2. Breach of fiduciary duty might be worth alleging, although in the ultimate analysis a webmaster is probably not a fiduciary.

3. Breach of contract is a possibility, since even if you didn't have anything in writing, there would be an oral contract, and even if there were no express oral agreement, a court would readily find an implied contract and probably also an implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing embedded therein.

4. Some of the purloined material may be more or less protected by a common-law copyright, or even common law trademark. These rights are pretty weak, but a lawyer representing you should at least consider these grounds for suit.

Finally, thre are possible causes of action here for business or property tort claims for, e.g., interference with prospective business advantage, unfair competition, conversion and perhaps others.

Re: Web Master/Confidentiality/Competition

Certainly it was not contemplated when you hired the "web-master" that you would be purchasing a generic site that would be reproduced for all similar sites. Therefore you have causes of action in misrepresentation, both intentional and negligent. The issue as to whom do the images and text belong remains. The trend in the law is attributing ownership to the website holder and not the designer so that neither the designer or third parties can cut and paste content from one website to others without violations of copyright law. For immediate action by way of injuction to stop the offending acts as well as suit for money damages call me directly at 1.619.222.3504.