When businesses attack other businesses? What to do?

Simply put:

A friend of mine's business has been suffering do to malicious attacks from another person's business recently.
What happened is that my friend is being blamed for stealing a texture he did not steal. The attacker didn't start the conversation with my friend with a simple "hey, can you remove your item because I believe that is a copy of mine", they just began with assaulting and greifing my friend immediately.
The attacker also put signs in my friends store, belittling my friends name and saying he doesn't even know how to use the program that made the texture. The person also stood in my friends store luring potential customers away to his store by the false claims.

My friend removed the sign, but now the attacker has a large display on his land, talking about how my friend is a lier and a thief.
The conversations my friend has had with the attacker trying to work something out with them ended up turning into assaults and grief attacks... the attacker also claiming to send a 'posse' of griefers after my friend.

My friend has sent in an abuse report about this, and so has a couple of his friends however we were wondering what else can he do? I told him to wait patiently for LL to maybe work on it, however he sits and watches his sales continue to decline... thinking it's due to the attacks on him.
Also, how can he pick up his business after this?

Your friend should tell this guy to file a DMCA takedown notice if he truly believes the texture is stolen, with knowledge that there are consequences for filing bogus notices. Your friend would be well within their rights (even if he were guilty) to file abuse reports for harassment. Theft is unfortunately common these days and it's easy to understand why people are paranoid about it. Unfortunately that often makes people jump to conclusions that aren't supported by the evidence and accuse innocent people. It's understandable for people who think they've been stolen from to be angry, but vigilante justice and harassment aren't the answer. As a customer I would resent being dragged into a he said/she said dispute and I would view this guy's display with skepticism. It wouldn't give me a favorable impression of him.

That's the way I feel. Even if I believed the guy was telling the truth I would steer clear of his store. I don't appreciate it when anyone wants to drag me into their personal drama. He may be hurting your friends store, but I'd guess he's hurting his own as well. I really can't imagine many people rejecting your friend and going to his store based on this nonsense, but maybe I'm wrong.

Just keep filing the AR's. He'll either eventually end up banned or life will settle down and everyone can get on with their lives.

I like to be able to know that the stuff I buy is actually the design of the person I bought it from, unless they are an obvious reseller. If people never said anything, how would you know that the skin you just bought was a ripoff from someone else? I got a notice from my favorite jeweler that someone is stealing her designs. Not like I shop much anywhere else, but how would a newbie know? This is getting out of hand.

Don't count on LL to intervene at all. The last person I know that was badly slandered repeatedly went to them for help and they did nothing.

Lots of businesses attack my business all the time it can be depressing but to be honest you just have to do the right thing and be the adult. Ignore them, forget the ARs there's really no point. People can freely put up signs calling you a thief if they want. Plus, any "griefing" that they try to do on your land is easily resolved with a little thing called auto return. My feeling is this sort of stuff doesn't affect customers anyway. There's such a large number of people and such an incredibly low density of population that the chances of anyone having seen your store AND this other store is pretty low.

If you tough it out long enough they'll get bored and go away, that''s my advice.

I think if your friend is playing his game fairly, there's no reason for someone
to try bring them down and their business, unless they are totaly spitefull.
I can imagen there's more businesses in sl now than on planet earth.
In real life you just gotta walk down any street to see how many
busineses are the same, diy stores, restaurants, bars, clubs.
All work beside each other in harmony or most of them.
They all offer their services to the best of their ability
and in return they gain their own customer base.
If you're unfair in your business it will show.
And eventually everybody will know

It happened to me a few years back, i kind of knew how it would end
The problem was 6 months of torment after declining an offer to join
forces and bring another business to their knees, nasty little man.
From my research i discovered this weirdo had approached several
other businesses and continued to hastle them, this was my first
realization of competition, learning how to deal with minor issues.
The problem presisted so i had enough..

One day he logged on and found a new store beside his store.
At the time i didn't see a problem with it, it was personal by now!


How did it end?

I found it amazing how this post went diagonal down the page in what seemed to be a totally unintentional way.

Id have to argue there is no where near as many Businesses in SL as on the planet earth though. Perhaps there are as many as in a very small country though.

I'm definitely not saying that people should just roll over if they think they've been stolen from, but I think it's important to always bear in mind that you might be wrong, and you should decide how to deal with it based on that always being a strong possibility.

Oh.
Hmmm.
Sometimes
something seems
unintentional when in
fact it was intentional and
premeditated. Still it does beg
the question: Why did he bother?
That is a mystery as vast as the great
pyramids themselves in the country called
Eygpt, I think, yeah that's it by golly, it's Eygpt.

Thank you for all of your replies, they are all very helpful.

My friend is pretty much waiting for things to calm down. It's unfortunate that he constantly is getting harassed by the attacker though, through IM's primarily. He finally muted the person.

However, my friend has talked with me about the ordeal and has said he heard the attacker talking in his store with someone, saying that he isn't going to file a DMCA report, but "shame it out of him" by griefing and harassment.

I see both ends of the deal. I, too, would be furious to find something I made be stolen by someone else... however I would most likely try to work something out with the other person, to find out if it was my design or something that looks similar.

Plus, if I was being called a thief about a texture I made, I would still try to work it out with other person in a calm manner.

The mature and legal way to do it is a DMCA complaint. Griefing and harrasment against one another will lead to both accounts getting banned.

My suggestion is to tell your "friend" to file abuse reports, dmca complaints, and if theres enough money involved, you could always do what Brent did and file a lawsuit.