Hi a question about copying a web site design?

[Chaky]

Hi I am a amatuer web designer working in web design company and I was wondering if you surf the web , you visit sites and like their design and set up are you allow to built a site of your own copying the other web sites design. I don't mean copying exactly pixel for pixel / code for code but very close different colors and minor changes to design.. is this legal or does it break some standard of web designs?
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[v0id]

Before you're even thinking about copying bigger parts of a websites, you should contact the owner or webmaster of the website. Then you can ask them about if you can copy something.

If you're just looking at a website and get some ideas, then there's nothing wrong. As long as you're not taking the website's images and copy+paste some of its source.

[TcM]

Well if the website is using a public template (for example a wordpress template) then you can search for that template and use it for yourself, but I don't think that you can copy the content/words word by word.. even for SEO that is bad.

[WingedPanther]

Copywrite law is fairly strict in the US. If you copy someone else's javascript, HTML, CSS, etc, you can be sued for a LOT of money. If you like the generally layout and try to recreate it without looking at the code, you are more likely to be OK. There are also a lot of people who are quite willing to share code, so if you find something at those places, you'll be OK.