Over the last year, Leeds-based firm The Consult claims to have had its website ‘stolen’ several times by other agencies - in one instance, so blatantly that it had to take court action against a firm in Harrogate. Legalities may stop him from naming names, but creative director Alex Atkinson is calling time on the practice.

The first time it happened, in the summer of 2007, I got an email from another agency saying they reckoned someone had just ‘lifted’ our website. I followed the link and couldn’t believe what I saw – another agency in our region, much bigger and better-known than we are, had copied our website pretty much down to the last detail. All they’d changed was their name, contact details and portfolio of work. We were stunned. We got in touch and there were some very red faces at the other end. The site was taken down, and we agreed that would be the end of the matter.

Since then we’ve had several similar situations, most too close for comfort but not really close enough to take action. But a couple of weeks ago we were alerted by some bloggers to the fact that an agency in Australia had not only copied the design of our site but actually stolen the markup – our style sheets, tags, and all the rest. It was indisputably a straight ‘lift’. Again, we had to threaten legal action. The design agency in question was very apologetic and offered to do some work for us for free, but I’m not sure we’d be able to respect the calibre or integrity of what they offered.