I’m Tired Of Companies Ripping off our site, So I’m Calling Them Out

Seek-out and contact the owners of these businesses. Point out what you have discovered. There's an outside possibility that they have no clue that their web designers have done this. They might actually feel rather embarrassed to learn so. If I couldn't code my own sites and had to rely on designers who took this approach I certainly would feel pretty bad upon learning about it.

What to do then? Tell them that you'll gladly allow them to use the design for a small fee. Or, perhaps better yet, if they actually hired an outside firm to build their site, propose that you take over their site design and that you'll fix what they got wrong.

If the deed was done in-house or you are up against a coder-designer-founder that just go lazy, figure out a win-win. Out of respect they ought to at least pay you something. You could even lobby for a link in the footer with "Site design based on ...". I wouldn't opt for "Site designed by" because if they screw it up it could look bad for you.

Aikido vs. Karate. It can work wonders.

Oh, yes, I also concur with those who proposed that you might want to consider productizing your design. As a minimum-viable-product you now know that there are people willing to steal it. With the right approach you might be able to find people willing to buy it.

You could even consider expanding upon this and creating a few more designs. Post them openly on your site with an invitation to use them and the condition that you are to receive payment after a thirty day trial period. Just a thought.

Could be sublime, like adds a menu item/link to their pages that has "Web Design Services" that points back to you, to the silly "Get free copyrighted material here" and a link to some dubious content site. Or it could just break periodically and cause them great frustration until they give up and use something else.

My bet would be that some third-party web firm/designer has sold all of these companies a "unique design" and more than likely most of them are unaware of the origin of the design, much less the other sites with the very same design.

You should be thanking them for creating so many opportunities for you. Why not expect everything will be stolen and go from there? It's all public files in the end.

From a quick glance, these sites appear to be tiny "companies" that probably saw a nice site and decided to copy it rather than think up something great for themselves. They are probably not taking away any measurable business from you via their copies sites, so any time you spend "calling them out" or even drawing more attention to them is just a waste of your time.

Go think up the next great design for them to copy and focus on making your own company better instead of putting down the others who decide to take a shortcut.

line 173: <script src="./smacontech_files/ideaware.js" type="text/javascript"></script>

The best thing to do is either ignore something like this or find a way to use the situation to better your business, perhaps with a post about how you value design innovation at your company or, like others have suggested, selling a Wordpress theme.

Don't concern yourself with trivial crap like this; just smile, make the best of it and focus on doing your thing.

^None of these people are "copying" him, at least visually. OP did not invent links with vertical scroll or the vertical parallax effect.

OP: Clearly some of the sites outright ripped off your design, but stop trash talking sites with designs you merely think are "similar" to yours.

Websites are HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, all of which is open text and easily copied. You shouldn't have any illusions that your design and code is copied and reused somewhere else.

In this case, the websites that are using the design aren't competitors and aren't taking away business from the original developer. What are they expecting to get out of it? An additional revenue stream of HTML templates?

I agree it's a problem if they are hot-linking to assets on someone else's server, but that's a problem in that it's consuming someone's bandwidth and server resources.

I say, call it flattery and be proud that you made a design that other people want to copy. If you're really paranoid (I don't see why), ask for attribution like "Site design by ..." at the bottom of the page.

- http://tools.pingdom.com/fpt/#!/eDa8U8X2P/http://ideaware.co...

Incidently - did you check whether these are individul copies or multiple clones by one person/organisation?

Anyway, if assets are being hotlinked you could have some fun...

* Some Russian Porn site uses jsonp using Crockford's host and he get a huge bill

* He polity asks them to host their own version and they don't reply

* He redirects the site to 'http://fbi.gov

* He receives a call from the FBI, because they have been getting suspicious traffic from some Russian site

* He then goes on to add a alert box with a annoying warning saying the site stole his bandwidth. Who cares for warnings any ways?

* He finally puts a loop in the JS file so that the other site wont load. He finally wins

/sarcasm off

Ok, it really is shameless. Especially the one that even hosts the javascript on your server (that opens up some interesting possibilities). But it really is flattery, the good bit is that you can now show them in your portfolio.

On another note, this design, while nice isn't all that original. I've seen it in other places too and maybe they ripped you off as well but for sure it's been around for a while.

Fun anecdote: I once sued company that had ripped off our script for doing plug-in-free video streaming. In court their defence to the claim they ripped us off was they had not ripped it from us but from one of our licensees.

It was a very short session.

Quite a few of the comments seem pretty malicious in nature. Like serving up javascript which behaves mischievously. It doesn't seem to matter to these people if the site owners were victims of bad and lazy designers.

(Never mind the fact that the original design is not that original.)

I can't believe that almost the same people then go on to rage and demand, more or less in spirit, everything else be free and open. (academic papers, iOS, music etc)

Free, open and being kind are rules which are good to apply to others. Isn't it?

Get in touch with the site, hear their side. Worst case, sue them.

From your post, I get the impression that you have not yet spoken to those companies about it.

That would be a good start.

Here's how it works:

1) The client keeps stalking a particular site he likes, which is usually a competitor in his own field.

2) There are some clients who like just want:

a) certain elements of the site, for example, the way something is done, instead of that something in its entirety itself,

b) and there are the rest, who just want the same exact design to be replaced by their own logo.

If you notice, in the original article, all of the examples the author provides, either fall into category a or b. You can be convinced that people who work in the category b are designers with a fair level of reasoning, and they are much much better people (comparatively) who don't want to rip off the site entirely, but would like to make it as much similar as possible to the original site, so they can somehow convince their clients.

The designers who belong to the category a are the most arrogant, desperate people you would ever find. Not to say that they are bad people, but they are desperate and they don't care about ethics. The only thing they care about is money.

I hate to bring in this topic of 'regionalism', but MOST (not ALL) of these designers are from India, Pakistan, etc. There are many popular 'call-to-offer' services in these countries wherein you just call these service centers and tell them you want a design to be completed, the next minute there will be 'design studios', 'agencies', 'professionals' offering you to design a website (of any kind) for something as cheap as $20. Yep, you read that right. $20 for a WHOLE website. These are the designers who resort to such tactics.

So, what do you do if you don't want your designs to get ripped off?

I will tell you my strategy - It's not fool proof, but it works REALL REALLY well.

BEFORE deploying your website to production, make sure, you follow these steps:

1) Create a duplicate copy of your homepage (which is the easiest target of being ripped off), and

a) Re-Name IMPORTANT class names, for example, rename #logo to #fewji903. Something unreadable. I usually write a handy script to automate this for the rest of the class names and ID's.

b) Add redundant containers - If you want to add styles for your logo, don't just write it as

    #logo{
    display:block;
    position:absolute;
    top:10px;
    background:url('some-image.jpg') no-repeat;
   }

   #aw469srfa #fewji903{
    display:block;
    position:absolute;
    top:10px;
    background:url('some-image.jpg') no-repeat;
   }

    $(document).ready(function() {
    //do a check to see if current url is YOUR website
    if( url_is_mywebsite()){
    $('#aw469srfa').html('<div id="fewji903"></div>');
    }
    else{
    // don't load the container
    alert('fuck-off');
    }

    function url_is_mywebsite(){
    //do something to check if the current url processed is your own, something like
    if (current_url=='google.com')
    return true
    else 
    return false    
    }
    });

Minify your CSS and make it unreadable. MOST rogue designers have no idea as to how to 'beautify' it.

As for your little JS snippet - Either just minify it, if your code is already complex, or obfuscate it. I always obfuscate my code. There is a downside to this - Your page load time might slow down a tiny,tiny un-noticeable bit, but like I said, it's un-noticeable for the most part, and it's a very good compromise for not having your entire website ripped-off:

This is how the above code, when obfuscated will look like:

    eval(function(p,a,c,k,e,d){e=function(c){return c.toString(36)};if(!''.replace(/^/,String)){while(c--){d[c.toString(a)]=k[c]||c.toString(a)}k=[function(e){return d[e]}];e=function(){return'\\w+'};c=1};while(c--){if(k[c]){p=p.replace(new RegExp('\\b'+e(c)+'\\b','g'),k[c])}}return p}('$(a).b(3(){2(0()){$(\'#9\').8(\'<1 6="7"></1>\')}4{j(\'c-i\')}3 0(){2(d==\'e.h\')5 f 4 5 g}});',20,20,'url_is_mywebsite|div|if|function|else|return|id|fewji903|html|aw469srfa|document|ready|fuck|current_url|google|true|false|com|off|alert'.split('|'),0,{}))

While I have shown a demo only for the Logo container, I urge everyone to follow this for as many important containers as possible. Now, when someone rips-off your website, even copies all the files and uploads it to their server, it's not going to work. They're just going to see a broken, half-assed website.

At that point, they could:

1) Reverse engineer the code to see how it works.

2) Try to re-design it from scratch

3) Cancel the project, or take too much time to complete it.

Do you know what I've seen most of these rogue designers do? They chose 3! Because, since you made the code a little complex for them, they don't want to spend time reverse engineering THE MOST COMPLEX code. What we wrote there wasn't THE MOST COMPLEX code, but it's the perception of complexity that matters. When a rogue designer is going to see code like that, he's going to think, "Oh shoot, these guys must be clever, look at all those complex class names. I ain't touching anything hot like that." He's simply going to assume it's way too complex to handle it.

How do I know this works? Most of these people who rip-off websites are not complete designers. They are either newbs, or in-experienced coders or someone else, trying to earn a buck or two from design. And that is why this works, especially now that we're clear about our target audience.

NOTE: I actually encourage you to do this with the final version of a back-up copy of your homepage design. Homepages rarely change, in my experience. So, it's a good compromise. Any developer is going to work-up on the un-adulterated code, not on the obfuscated version.

And for completeness, here's advice #3:

3) DON'T write a blog post linking back to the ones who ripped you off. You're just giving them free publicity (pageviews). Atleast if you do write, just mention the website and don't link it. Perhaps post screenshots of their homepages. They don't deserve your extra pageviews.

Cheers.

For the other guys, talk to a lawyer or just someone who knows "legalese" well enough to formulate a serious sounding email complaining about copyright infringement and threatening with a lawsuit. And have someone with a title of "copyright lawyer" or "IP legal consultant"or anything along the lines co-sign that email. They will shit their pants and change their design (they probably hired a freelancer that copied your work...). Unless they're based in a place forsaken by the IP gods, like China or Russia, then it might get too complicated to be worth the effort on your side...

http://www.sparkfun.com

And this Chinese knock-off:

http://www.geeetech.com/

Not only did they rip off our design but they also use a bunch of our product photos. We himmed and hawed about doing something about it but ultimately realized there really was nothing we could do to enact any real change. At the end of the day any site's CSS is open source by virtue of the technology (and our product images were already CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 licensed anyway).

So we said screw it. We decided that the best way to assert this design was our own was to run a better website, and more so, just run a better business. In the end it hasn't dented our traffic. GE Tech looks sort of like SparkFun but it sure is a lot more rough around the edges. We've continued to refine our design with less of a Geocities palette while never really caring what those Chinese ripoff artists are up to. It's irrelevant. We'll continue to define our web presence without using them for context, and if they continue to grab skin-deep features from us then terrific - we're a source of inspiration and should be proud.

I mean, it's one thing to complain about some of those direct copies. You should. But it's another entirely to not expect people to lift your code out. That is the way the web has been for a long time, and it's not going to change just because of some practically unenforcible laws unevenly defined internationally.

It only became clear he had blatantly copied other sites after he left, unfortunately (he was also sacked from future jobs for the same thing, I suspect).

He even had the audacity to claim an award for one of his rip-offs, including attending the vegas ceremony (IIRC). I really don't know how he slept at night.

I'm not going to name names as this was a long time ago and I'm hoping he's changed his ways.

Why not use them to your advantage, use them as marketing tool and if they refuse then force them to remove the design. Maybe only then, at that point it is ok to call them out and shame them.

Shaming someone just created an adversarial effect and it brings some negative publicity too. If you can show that you are gracious and is able to manage and find a middle ground in such a situation, it'll show a better you. I rather work with a company that I can always negotiate with than one who always take the hard line.

I'll admit I've heavily lifted design ideas from other sites but I've never once actually copied and pasted a single line of code from another site without permission. I would always always always recreate the elements I liked from scratch and the majority of times this gives a site a different enough appearance to not be a total ripoff. Just because you can view source doesn't mean the whole web is open source.

At least copying the HTML and JS saves a lot of work.

You believe that no one should build a similar design? You believe that they are using exactly your css? You believe that they are using exactly your images? You believe that they are using exactly your javascript?

It's unclear what you are raging at. If it's just a look-alike design, that I think you are playing the fool, and pretty anti-innovation. If they are just loading your css/images/js that that is a bit of a different story.

Especially by companies like http://smacontech.com/ which claim to be design firms. Worse still, they seem to regurgitate the design into some of their client's sites as well (http://www.smipropellers.com/)

Not sure how you can proceed here. But if you are intent on naming and shaming them publicly, try posting a message on their facebook fan page's wall. That should make them situp and take notice of your complaints.

http://www.revoblue.com/

Or are they maybe close but not close enough to call out considering the size of their legal department?

To be honest, not being much of a designer, I've seen this scrolling with background switching 'style' become popular on a few sites recently.

I have no reason to doubt that OP developed it from scratch and clearly some of the linked sites blatantly ripped off the entire design, but the question of where inspiration ends and what constitutes 'independently developed' gets murky really quickly.

if not, I Seriously think this whole copyright thing should die. apparently this design is very typical, its not like you have invented some unique jquery scrollTo plugin, or the fonts/icons.

so a few people copied your website as is, some others might change it a bit more, what's the big deal ? I see your website as a copy of some other hundred websites I've seen before here and there (check theme forest for example).

Let people copy and do what they like .. if you want to protect, probably dont put it on a client side.

welcome to the internet ..

Having said all of that - copying is a no-no - taking inspiration from others - well that would be normal.

"Our creative & design is so good, its copied by a number of digital agencies and businesses including Dapatical Global, ..."

Perhaps even parody testimonials are in order.

"Our in house designer was out of ideas and the drafts from 99sites were sub par. That's why we 'borrowed' the work of AM - it was far superior to anything we could have done ourselves' - Max, CEO RevoBlue.

Yeah it sucks that a heap of sites Cltr-C'd your work. But there are better ways of addressing this.

* https://twitter.com/SmaconTech * https://twitter.com/dapatical * https://twitter.com/saraswathimetal

Or maybe it won't make any difference, looking at the stats on these accounts

Granted, a lot of those do copy your design but if you're trying to claim the above three do, you're a little overzealous.

This is the same reason I started obfuscating javascript, css and html. It at least make it difficult enough to copy/edit that people may consider creating something themselves.

Not sure, don't want to whore out the company by selling our site!

One of my companies is a screen printer and over the years we've found 5 - 10 other sites using our copy, word for word. Usually people are pretty embarrassed when you call them out privately and just handle it.

"Lesser artists borrow; great artists steal"

"We have always been shameless about stealing great ideas."

You have recognised that people want to utilise your designs, but you've establish how to leverage that.

Imagine if instead you "called them out", you released it design as open source.

This would be great publicity and it would give you the opportunity to come up with something even better.

Also there are a couple sites on the list that shouldn't be there. They look just as similar to your site as your site looks to the Mercurial theme.

Man, isn't that the truth?

Beautiful site, but my framerate really took a dive when I got to this section! Hurts the experience.

I don't know if this avenue is available to you but you might want to look into it.

Sure, one of those sites is a blatant rip-off of his, but I've seen it done a lot of times in many similar ways.

The fact that they absolutely can and do? I'm not sure there's much that can be done here, but the call-out is a great way to handle it.

The same can be applied over web design.

If you don't believe me go ahead, make an exactly copy of Apple.com, put your logo on it, and advertise as your website.

Your website itself looks like dozens of similar templates on ThemeForest.com

I will reply to some of your comments in a bit.

The only blatant ripoff is revoblue.com

Take the compliment - mimicry is the highest form of flattery.

Design Patent.