Row over copying claim

Hassan when he graduated from the academy set up in Oldham by Dragons’ Den entrepreneur Peter Jones

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A 17-YEAR-OLD Oldham entrepreneur who received a start-up grant from Oldham Enterprise Fund is at the centre of a storm over claims he copied a competitor’s website.

Hassan Iqbal, who offers web development as Creative Pixels, has been threatened with legal action after pages from his site were claimed to be almost identical to pages created by an Essex-based company, Storm Creative.

Hassan says he used a subcontractor to design his pages and knew nothing of the similarities.

But Storm Creative has labelled him a “rogue trader”.

Hassan has admitted he was in the wrong and he took his site offline as soon as Storm Creative contacted him.

He said: “I paid a freelancer to complete the work and obviously I’m really annoyed with him.

“I have apologised to Storm Creative; I don’t know what else I can do. I was just as shocked as the other company when I found out.”

Hassan, a student at Oldham’s Peter Jones Enterprise Academy, won a £2,200 grant from the OEF, set up by Oldham philanthropist Norman Stoller and managed by the Oldham Business Leadership Group.

A representative from the leadership group has this week attempted to act as a mediator in the row - but Storm Creative insists Hassan should face further action.

James Jones, Storm Creative marketing manager, said the company was alerted by a customer.

He said: “We took one look and it was immediately obvious. He has tried to blame it on using freelancers, but he must have known and seen that the images on his site were of our client’s work and 100 per cent not his own, so that’s absolute rubbish.

“By duplicating our website structure and text, he’s negatively affected our search engine ranking, as Google penalises sites for duplicate content. So we get punished for him ripping us off.

“We’ve documented everything and will be passing this on to our solicitors to pursue.”