Maybe it has already happened to you? You have invested a lot of time and money in setting up and marketing your business and suddenly a website pops up that is confusingly similar to your own business site & maybe even uses an identical / similar name and/or sells similar products.
Is this a coincidence?
Of course, you should always first evaluate whether it really is a confusable coporate identity in its entirety or whether there are significant differences at second glance. You then have the opportunity to contact the person in question in order to reach an agreement. As a rule, however, this will not easily lead to the person taking his website offline.
So what are your legal options?
Copyright
Copyright protects creative achievements that must be embodied in a work (book, source code) & arises automatically. However, the pure business idea is not covered by the scope of protection of copyright. If your idea is embodied in writing in a text, this text may be protectable, but not the idea behind it as such.
Trademark law
As a rule, your name or logo can only be protected under trademark law if you have registered it with the Trademark and Patent Office. If you have not yet done so, it may be urgently advisable to register your name or logo so that your competitors do not beat you to it. However, a business idea cannot be protected under trademark law.
Competition law
The Unfair Competition Act (UWG) offers start-ups good opportunities to defend themselves against possible idea theft. But even the UWG only protects the concrete implementation of your idea. If you are already active on the market as an entrepreneur, you can defend yourself against copied websites, texts or graphics.
Patent law
Parts of a business concept that consist of technical/physical/chemical or other scientific innovations can be protected by a patent. Start-ups that deal with concrete technical product inventions should register their products with the German Patent and Trademark Office if necessary. This is because a patent does not come into existence automatically either, but must be registered with the Trademark and Patent Office (like a trademark). But here, too, a mere business idea cannot be protected.
NDAs
Non-disclosure agreements are useful at least if you use external services in advance (e.g. from a designer etc.) and already disclose your business idea in the course of this process. In this case, however, only an individual, i.e. personal, confidentiality agreement is made between you and the other party. As soon as the business idea is publicly accessible, for example in the form of your website, anyone can take note of it and process it for their own purposes. An NDA is no solution to this problem.
Recommendation
If you find yourself in a situation where your business concept has been copied, the possible legal steps are unfortunately limited and often very disappointing for start-ups.
For this reason, it may be advisable in individual cases to conclude NDAs with individual parties in advance, i.e. before publishing your business idea, and to secure trademark or patent rights in good time.
If you later discover that texts or other embodied content have been brazenly copied by you, copyright law or competition law may be relevant. In this case, you should seek advice from an experienced lawyer in order to assert your rights.
Intellectual property law is therefore not always relevant in the case of an idea theft. In case of doubt: Be faster & better than the competition! Healthy competition thrives on mutual inspiration and further development.
In any case, if you are unsure about the legal situation, you should seek advice from an expert on whether and what further steps are appropriate to take against idea theft.