SaaS competitors training on your public knowledge base and UI text: unfair competition and screen-scraping C&Ds

Published: December 2, 2025 • AI, Demand Letters

You spend years refining your app:

crisp onboarding copy
polished in-app tooltips and empty-state messages
a deep, SEO-friendly knowledge base that actually answers questions

Then a new competitor appears with:

suspiciously similar UI microcopy (“Invite your first teammate,” “No records yet – connect your CRM to get started”), and
a help center that feels like your docs run through an LLM: same structure, same examples, same edge cases, same headings.

This article is about what to do when a rival SaaS has clearly trained on, scraped, or machine-rewritten your public UI and knowledge base, and how to frame a cease and desist that blends:

copyright
(sometimes) trade dress
deceptive and unfair competition theories
plus the reality that screen-scraping and AI training are now part of the fact pattern.

Contents

💡 What “AI-trained competitor” copying actually looks like

Most of these disputes don’t start with a confession. They start with patterns.

🔍 Symptom	What it looks like in practice
Near-identical UX flows	Your onboarding wizard’s step sequence, button labels and confirmations mirrored with trivial word changes. Same “no data yet” messages, same CTA phrasing.
Help center déjà vu	Competitor’s docs follow your exact article hierarchy, question phrasing, and examples – only rewritten in slightly more generic language, or padded with fluff.
Repeated quirky phrases	Odd metaphors, analogies or domain-specific phrases you coined appear in their UI and docs, sometimes with awkward synonyms from machine rewriting.
Suspicious release lag	Your new feature launches with docs on Monday; their “similar” feature and docs ship a few weeks later with a strangely familiar structure.

Whether they used:

Playwright/Puppeteer + a scraper,
direct requests to your docs API,
or just prompted a model on your URLs,

the legal core is the same:

They appropriated the expressive parts of your product (text, structure, examples, sometimes layout) to smooth their competing UX.

⚖️ What rights you actually have here

You’re rarely going to base this only on “they used AI on my site.”

The real leverage is in the layers:

🧩 Legal lever	How it helps in a SaaS copycat scenario
Copyright	Protects your original textual content (knowledge base articles, UI strings, tooltips, onboarding checklists) and sometimes your article structure. Machine-rewriting that preserves your creative structure and distinctive examples can still be infringing.
Trade dress / “look and feel”	In some cases, the overall layout, sequence, and distinctive visual presentation of your interface can support trade dress / unfair competition claims if it causes confusion. Stronger if you have a distinctive style users associate with your brand.
Contract / Terms of Use	If your ToS or KB terms forbid scraping, automated access, or use of content to build a competing service or train models, you have a contract anchor for “you breached our terms by scraping/training.”
Unfair competition / deceptive practices	When they mimic your copy and UX so closely that customers may think the products are affiliated, or when they falsely present themselves as the “original” or “leader” while borrowing your content.
Trade secrets (sometimes)	Less common with public KBs, but if some flows or internal docs were gated behind login, and they got in via fake accounts, exports, or employee misuse, you may have a trade secret / confidentiality angle.

Your C&D should be structured so that if it lands in outside counsel’s inbox, they see:

clear factual comparisons, and
a reasonable theory of infringement / unfair competition and contract breach –

not just “we’re mad about AI.”

🧾 Evidence kit before you send anything

Think like litigation prep, even if you just want them to stop.

✅ Evidence	Why it matters
Time-stamped originals	Screenshots and exports of your UI and docs, with dates (internal changelogs, Wayback, release notes). Shows prior creation.
Side-by-side comparisons	Screens with callouts: your UI vs theirs, your doc vs theirs, with matching phrases highlighted.
Structure comparison	Table of your KB hierarchy vs theirs (same categories, article titles, FAQ order).
Technical logs	Any unusual traffic patterns: bot-like visits to docs, API access from their IP ranges, or accounts linked to them accessing your app.
Terms of Use & KB terms	Your ToS/Terms/KB license, especially any “no scraping/no training/no competing product” language.
Customer confusion examples	Screenshots of customers asking whether the two products are affiliated or assuming they’re the same.

You don’t need all of it to send a letter. But the better your evidence pack, the harder it is for them to shrug it off as coincidence.

🎯 Who you’re actually writing to

For B2B SaaS, you often have multiple audiences:

🎯 Target	Why bother	Goal of the letter
Their CEO / GC	They understand litigation and reputational risk.	Get them to rein in the product and docs team, change copy, stop scraping/training.
Their head of product / engineering	They probably orchestrated the copying.	Make it clear “keep training on their site” is off the table.
Cloud / marketplace partners (optional)	If they’re on an app marketplace or partner directory.	Build a record and, if needed, pressure via platform rules about deceptive practices.

Letters below assume you’re writing peer-to-peer SaaS: firm, factual, not scorched earth.

📩 Template A – C&D to SaaS competitor scraping/training on your KB and UI

[Your Letterhead / Company Name]
[Date]

By Email and Certified Mail
[Name of CEO / General Counsel]
[Competitor Company Name]
[Address]
[Email]

Re: Unauthorized copying and AI-assisted use of [Your Company]’s UI text and knowledge base – cease and desist

Dear [Name],

I am [Name], [Title] of [Your Company, Inc.] (“[Your Company]”), the developer and owner of the [Your Product Name] SaaS platform.

Over the past [time period], we have identified multiple instances where [Competitor Product], marketed and sold by [Competitor Company], appears to have copied or AI-rewritten material from [Your Company]’s user interface and public knowledge base, in ways that go well beyond coincidence or generic industry language.

Examples of copying

By way of example (non-exhaustive):

Onboarding flow and UI copy.

Our onboarding checklist in [Your Product] includes the following sequence and messaging (see screenshots in Exhibit A):

Step 1: “Connect your CRM to sync your existing contacts”

Step 2: “Invite your first teammate to collaborate on deals”

Step 3: “Customize your pipeline stages” (with tooltip text, “Start with our default pipeline and tweak names, not structure”)

[Competitor Product] uses a substantially identical three-step flow and nearly identical phrasing (see Exhibit B), including unique phrases such as “tweak names, not structure,” indicating direct copying or AI-assisted paraphrasing of our UI text.

Knowledge base structure and language.

Our Help Center article “[Original Article Title]” at [URL] has been published since [date]. It covers [brief description] and includes distinctive examples and headings such as “[Unique heading/example].”

[Competitor]’s help article “[Infringing Article Title]” at [URL] follows the same structure, question order, and examples, with only superficial synonym changes and rephrasing consistent with automated rewriting based on our article.

FAQ and troubleshooting content.

Several of [Competitor]’s FAQ entries mirror our content word-for-word in key parts or use the same unusual metaphors and analogies that we coined in our documentation (see Exhibits C–D).

Terms of use and unauthorized scraping/training

[Your Company] is the owner of all rights in the above-referenced content, including UI microcopy, help center articles, FAQs, and related materials. Our public website, web application, and knowledge base are subject to [Your Company]’s Terms of Use, which expressly prohibit:

automated scraping or crawling of our services and content;

using automated tools (including bots, scripts, or machine learning systems) to access or copy our content; and

using our content to build or train any competing product or service.

Any use of scraping, crawling, data export, or AI training on our UI text and knowledge base to support [Competitor Product] is unauthorized and constitutes, at minimum:

copyright infringement of our original text and documentation;

breach of contract, via violation of our Terms of Use; and

unfair competition / deceptive practices to the extent the look and feel of your product and support content is designed to mimic [Your Product] and create confusion in the market.

Demand

Accordingly, we demand that [Competitor Company]:

Immediately cease and desist from further copying, scraping, training on, or AI-assisted derivation of any content from [Your Company]’s user interface, public website, or knowledge base, including but not limited to [your domain(s)].

Remove or rewrite from scratch all UI copy, product messaging, help center articles, FAQ entries, and related content in [Competitor Product] that are derived from our materials, including the examples identified in Exhibits A–D. “Rewrite” in this context does not mean additional synonym substitutions on top of our text, but independently created content not based on our expressions, structure, or examples.

Within [10–14] days of this letter, provide a written certification that:

you have stopped any scraping, crawling, or automated access to [Your Company]’s properties;

you have removed our content from any datasets or systems (including machine learning models) used to power [Competitor Product]; and

any overlapping copy or documentation has been independently re-created without reference to our materials.

Reservation of rights

We hope this matter can be resolved amicably. However, if [Competitor Company] does not promptly address the issues described above and provide the requested assurances, [Your Company] will consider all available options, including:

seeking injunctive relief and damages for copyright infringement, breach of contract, and unfair competition; and

notifying partners, marketplaces, and other stakeholders who may be affected by the deceptive overlap in product presentation and documentation.

Nothing in this letter should be taken as a complete statement of our facts or legal positions, nor as a waiver of any rights or remedies, all of which are expressly reserved.

Please direct your response to:

[Your Name]
[Title]
[Your Company, Inc.]
[Email]
[Phone]
[Address]

Sincerely,

[Signature]
[Your Name]

🧩 Optional add-on: short “notice” email for product/eng leaders

You can reuse the core content in a shorter internal-facing note to their VP Product / CTO, something like:

Subject: Your team’s use of [Your Company]’s KB/UI copy in [Competitor Product]

Hi [Name],

We’ve found multiple examples where [Competitor Product]’s onboarding flows and help center content appear to be AI-rewritten copies of [Your Product]’s UI text and knowledge base – including distinctive phrases and examples that are unique to our docs.

Our Terms of Use prohibit scraping or using our content to train or build a competing service, and we treat our documentation and microcopy as protected IP.

Our legal team has sent a formal letter to [CEO/GC]. I wanted to flag this to you directly so you’re aware and can course-correct internally before this escalates further. We’re asking that you:

stop any automated access / training on our public site and KB; and

have your team independently recreate any overlapping copy or docs without referring to our materials.

Happy to share the specific examples so your team can fix them quickly.

Best,
[You]