Useful Advice: Website Copyright Infringement
What can you do if you find a web site with text or images copied from your own site or from your brochures. First, contact the owners of the site, they may be unaware that you own the copyright to the material. Ask them to remove the offending items. If they refuse you will need to be able to prove that you own the copyright.
How can you find out if anyone has copied your work? Take a unique or unusual phrase from your site(that someone might find useful) and do a search for it in a search engine (enclose the phrase in quotes). Choose a comprehensive engine (www.google.com is currently one of the biggest).
It is a popular misconception that you can re-use photographs from a Web site on your own site. This is definitely not the case unless you have express permission to do so.
A client of mine was charged nearly £8,000 for use of a photo that a previous Web design company had purchased on their behalf. What the design company did not tell their client (probably because they didn't realise) was that the license to use the image was for one year. My client took legal advice and was advised to pay the bill from the stock photo company. They then removed the image to avoid further charges in future years.
Other legal issues regarding Search engines are discussed on the excellent SearchEngineWatch website