[jeffmould]

1. Talk to a lawyer.

2. Do you have any patents or other defensible protection?

3. Build and iterate faster than them so you are the market leader.

4. IANAL, but unless they blatantly copy your site word for word, and image for image, you are going to have a hard time doing anything from a legal perspective (unless it is a past employee or a situation where you may have a NDA or a non-compete in effect).

5. The real fact is there will always be competition, even if it didn't exist when you started, someone is bound to come along. You just have to show more drive, be the better product, and win in the end. Everything else you do is a waste of time/money on your part IMO.

[AyKarsi]

Re 1 Probabyl to much time and money in the wrong channels..

Re 2: Only a trademark

Re 4: It's seems to be somebody who knows the internals. As they are asking for things, you can't really know unless you've worked with us. We're trying to figure out who is doing the biding..

Re 5: Completly aggree. What they will be lacking is the market knowledge. Before spending money on a lawyer, I'd rather invest that money directly in the product..

[jeffmould]

Yep. I wouldn't worry about it. Freelancer.com, etc..., are full of "build a clone" projects. Keep your focus on your project.