
I’m Tired Of Companies Ripping off our site, So I’m Calling Them Out - xs_kid
http://andresmax.com/post/42279937752/im-tired-of-companies-ripping-off-our-site-so-im
======
robomartin
I think you might just be taking the wrong approach. Shaming them is a bad
idea, at least as a first move.

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.

~~~
mijustin
Wow. I don't agree with this response at all. "Allow them to use the design
for a small fee"?

The original site design was the product of careful branding, long hours of
coding, and probably countless revisions: the point of all this work is to
create something that uniquely represents the company.

Responding to piracy by "homogenizing" an original design isn't the answer.

The rest of the business world is definitely not that generous (trust me: if
you steal an image from Getty Images, they don't let you get away with paying
a "small fee"). Neither should OP.

~~~
robomartin
The OP is a design house. Is this particular design the last drop of creative
juice they have? I would think they can certainly evolve their site into
another equally interesting design.

It's almost like what happens to Mercedes Benz. Companies like Mitsubishi
shamelessly copy MBZ designs. They've been doing it for years. MBZ's answer is
to continuously innovate.

Obsolete you own product.

~~~
bandithouse
so now you're saying they should change/evolve their design because other
companies have blatantly ripped them off? it's not just "some design", it's
their brand. if Mitsubishi put a MBZ logo on their car MBZ wouldn't
"continuously innovate" on their logo.

~~~
alexqgb
Bingo.

Also, there's a legal concept called trade dress, which protects the signature
elements of a product. Mitusibusi copies Mercedes, but only to point. And that
point is defined by law. This law explains why the imitations are so pale, and
why the markets for Mitsubishis and Mercedes have so little overlap.

That doesn't mean that Mercedes can stagnate. It's a design icon, after all,
and has to fit within a larger sphere that is always changing. But protection
for its brand does mean can move at a more considered and deliberate pace
(good conditions for thoughtful, lasting design), then it could if competitors
could make perfect copies with no appreciable latency.

Slow moving design is a feature, not a bug. You'll note that cars that hit on
a relatively unchanging design that doesn't date itself quickly have higher
resale values than those that don't (like, ahem, Mitsubishi).

------
ChuckMcM
Interesting, given the copying of the js directly, you could use that to your
advantage. Have it behave one way if the page is served up from an IP address
you own, and slightly differently served from a foreign address.

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.

~~~
deathfrag
I completely agree to this method. Break their site with your js.

~~~
readme
Hey, if we have execute of JS on all those clients, why not _REDIRECT_ them to
your site? Free traffic. All relevant.

~~~
fnordfnordfnord
Wait, they've not merely copied his js, they're having him host it too? Oh
exploitable. Figure out to make it benefit you. I'd have a hard time resisting
the urge to play some mischief though.

~~~
sp332
No, at least the one I looked at didn't. But if they're just copy-pasting, he
could add a domain check (or IP address check) and make it behave differently.

Edit: apparently some of them are!
<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5165238>

------
incongruity
I think there might be a commonality here – a number of them _seem_ to be
located in Australia (with one in India and one in the UK) – a whois check
shows a few AU contacts and an AU-based whois privacy guard, so I can't be
_sure_ , but the do seem to be oddly clustered, IMHO.

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.

~~~
dclowd9901
My impression, by how widespread it was, was that someone adopted it for a
Wordpress theme, and it's now on Themeforest.

~~~
incongruity
Perhaps – but then why the geographic coincidence/clustering I noticed in the
sites cited by the author? It certainly could be just dumb luck, but it seemed
unlikely.

------
elboheme
Make a premium WordPress theme based on this design, slap a price on it, and
distribute through WordPress theme sites thereby creating an additional income
stream for your company. I'm in Miami and I'd be happy to help.

~~~
andresmax
I might actually do this, we were just discussing this at the office!

~~~
clicks
I probably won't be interested in a Wordpress theme, but if you make a
Bootstrap theme quite like this layout I'd definitely buy it.

~~~
coderdude
In the mean time, either of these might be a good starting point for you:

<http://wrapbootstrap.com/preview/WB0D8R213>

<http://wrapbootstrap.com/preview/WB0459130>

(disclosure: my site)

------
methodin
You could easily use this to your advantage: 1\. Your portfolio is now larger
(my designs + people who ripped off my designs) 2\. You could create a "Submit
sites that ripped off our design" for your customers and create a conversation
around it 3\. Ask the sites to reference yours in their footer 4\. Modify the
ripped off source files to display modified header/footer on external sites

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.

~~~
CanSpice
"Our designs are so awesome we have a bunch of imitators (<link> <link>
<link>) but we think you'll agree that our original designs are better! Often
imitated, never duplicated."

------
tensafefrogs
While I agree that these other sites have "ripped you off," I don't think you
should spend any more time worrying about it or "fighting" them.

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.

~~~
corwinstephen
I think in this day and age, people who take the high road often get squashed.
The "nice guys finish last" adage has never been more applicable.

~~~
amorphid
I like to think nice guys finish in a race of sufficient length. This is
idealistic thinking on my part, but it helps me keep my thinking positive.

------
0x0
Haha, the smacontech guys even include a javascript file with your site's name
on it:

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

~~~
mimiflynn
Even copied their google analytics js file.

~~~
andresmax
This is how I first noticed them, our GA was showing some weird links.

~~~
nathan_long
Hahahahaha! That is seriously incompetent.

------
kyro
This post is pretty childish. Competition and copycats have existed for
centuries and will continue to exist long after you're gone. You think calling
them out is going to cause them to have a sudden change of heart after they
presumably ripped off your design? Probably not. And I'm almost certain it
won't affect any of their future business. You've not only placed yourself in
an antagonistic position, but are now open to rebuttals and return attacks.
Didn't you read OXO's response to Quirky "calling them out"?

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.

~~~
dclowd9901
I'm inclined to agree with you, but already a few of the sites on his list
have been taken down for "upcoming new design!"

It seems shaming does have a palpable effect.

------
sequoia
OP is going overboard with the accusations. <http://www.capta360.com>
<http://www.creativegerms.com/about> <http://pearlwebstudio.com>

^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.

~~~
dusing
I thought the same thing, they are pretty different.
<http://www.capta360.com/> is not even close. Maybe he's saying they use his
js

~~~
aussieoioi
Could you not observe that capta are for a start using the exact same opening
image as he is? Without you even noticing that glaring ripoff I doubt your
commentary carries any weight. Drink your first cup of empathy and put on a
solutions cap if you want any shot at growing. :-)

~~~
dusing
Don't be a cunt.

OP was mad people were stealing his websites design, not his photography, for
all we know they both sourced it from the same image warehouse.

------
Osiris
I've seen a few posts on HN complaining about people copying their sites, but
I'm not sure I sympathize.

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.

~~~
lysol
It's because it's a lie. Many times the copied sites have copy asserting that
so-and-so is a great firm, make great products, when they haven't made
anything. If isn't such a big deal, why don't the copied sites say 'We copied
this entire website, minus copy changes, from X.'?

------
gbadman
Ouch: "Your website is slower than 95% of all tested websites" with a 28.85s
load time.

\-
[http://tools.pingdom.com/fpt/#!/eDa8U8X2P/http://ideaware.co...](http://tools.pingdom.com/fpt/#!/eDa8U8X2P/http://ideaware.co/)

~~~
mnicole
Funnily enough, their website loaded slower than the ones who were ripping it,
so I was initially confused about what the argument was as the large
background image took ~20s to load/push down the rest of the layout. The JS on
the navigation never started working either.

~~~
robmclarty
The direct copying by other sites is definitely lame, but I don't see anything
here I'd want to copy. The crazy load time makes the site almost unusable (as
I write this, the page is frozen, and still loading... maybe use fewer http
requests and compression?), and the design is nothing to write home about
(it's decent though).

------
drzaiusapelord
I love how so many of them are just saturated with buzzwords and typical empty
suit jargon. I guess stupidity and lack of ethics go hand in hand.

~~~
figurify
One actually gives birth to the other...

~~~
illuminate
I'd say they both feed into each other bidirectionally.

------
niel
You might want to add rel="nofollow" attributes to those outgoing links. This
indicates to search engines that you do not want your links to influence the
other sites' rankings. Not sure if this is possible with tumblr though.

~~~
andresmax
Done, thanks!

------
retube
Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery? Pehaps you could reference these
guys on your site as evidence of love for your design chops :)

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...

~~~
ajross
Exactly. It's a really nice layout, but honestly -- should the essence here
(full page photo, small menu at top right, logo at top left, Title/quote in
middle with "more info" button) really be "protectable" IP? I just don't see
it, sorry.

That doesn't make those designers (or probably just one) honorable or talented
or honest. But they have the right to clone layouts too.

~~~
logn
It's definitely IP theft, down to the minute details like the red underline on
links. The way the images uncover the footer on the bottom is really unique
too.

~~~
wedtm
Took me a second cup of coffee to detect the sarcasm. I like you.

~~~
logn
Sorry, I wasn't being sarcastic. The links on the top right aren't standard.
The footer also has a funky styling. Check out the page to see. Just from
reading my comment and not examining the styling I see how it could sound
sarcastic.

~~~
andyharl
There is nothing anyone is designing that is original.

~~~
illuminate
The direct rip is still bad form.

------
djd
This reminds me of one of Douglas Crockford's talk. The story goes some thing
like this.

* 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

------
afandian
Finally! A .co site that isn't abusing the Colombian TLD for some stupid
naming gimmick.

------
jacquesm
A design company that rips off the design of another design company! That's a
new one.

/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.

------
cscurmudgeon
It is interesting to see how the community reacts when someone steals their
work. There are some good suggestions like contacting the owners of the
offending sites politely.

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?

------
brador
This might be a web design company reusing your design. The sites listed may
have no knowledge of this being a copy, and most likely paid a high dollar
amount for this cool design.

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

------
hjay
You provided the links to those websites, and added that you're not sure how
to proceed.

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

That would be a good start.

~~~
dpcan
That's what I was thinking.

1) What if someone took their design, created a template of it, and sold it on
a number of website template sites - and these companies were none-the-wiser.

2) Was the design created in-house, or did they hire a designer? Some
designers claim the design was all of their own doing, but it was quite
obvious they "borrowed" from a template site first.

------
sherjilozair
Isn't your design inspired from <http://www.spotify.com/se/> ?

~~~
mijustin
These two sites looks completely different to me:

Spotify:
[https://www.evernote.com/shard/s3/sh/dca1e28e-c43e-4c93-84cf...](https://www.evernote.com/shard/s3/sh/dca1e28e-c43e-4c93-84cf-8b2637a5759c/32c19f314f10e1fbda0ef1e1eee4fd5e)

OP:
[https://www.evernote.com/shard/s3/sh/846bba48-7b78-4040-9f18...](https://www.evernote.com/shard/s3/sh/846bba48-7b78-4040-9f18-1fdbb3c279c4/ff11e11f9d0d7e48a199b09cd71cfcda)

~~~
sherjilozair
Yes, the visual assets are different. But, the novelty is in the scrolling
effect idea, which is quite the same in both. And I think spotify did it
first, although I'm not too sure.

------
xauronx
This is what happens when a company contracts someone for $9/hr and says "Make
me something like [url] for my site".

~~~
rhokstar
This may very well be the case!

------
rwanghacker
wow, some of those copies were just blantant. Is there a way to embed a
specific string in the website (either through html or css) so later you can
somehow google search anyone is copying you?

~~~
drostie
Given that they might not have very good CSS skill, you might embed a CSS
comment or CSS properties which look like they do something but don't -- a
would-be stealer probably wouldn't delete something which they didn't
understand.

------
brandon272
I think that at the end of the day, when it comes to people copying your
design, you really need to take the emotion out of it. I've had my design work
copied before, so I know that there is an emotional response that comes along
with having your work copied. But there also needs to be a practical
assessment of what impact the copying will have on your business. If the
site(s) copying you aren't big names and aren't competing with you, it's
likely a waste of your time and energies to be pursuing them. That's time
being taken away from your core business to focus on other people that
ultimately have an inconsequential impact on your ability to be competitive
and make money.

~~~
aglosson
Also, interestingly enough, by publicly shaming them, you're providing traffic
to their site. Does the saying "any press is good press" still hold?

------
neya
Hi all, I'm a designer and I have been under a similar situation - I have
been, many, many times as a designer, asked to design something _exactly_ like
what my client has showed me, which most of the times was, another site. I
haven't accepted a single offer from such clients, but I know how exactly they
all work.

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;
       }
    

But re-write it as:

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

BUT, in your actual HTML file, what you do is DON'T include the logo container
with ID 'fewji903'. Instead, write a tiny Jquery script to load this container
dynamically. Something like:

    
    
        $(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    
        }
        });
    

Now step 2):

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,{}))
    

I always use <http://www.jsobfuscate.com> for this purpose.

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.

~~~
ricardobeat
What? You are going to

    
    
        - break your CSS by making it dependent on javascript
        - use inefficient compression, easily reversible, to "obfuscate" javascript
        - both of these slowing your page loading time
    

That's like the worst of DRM _badly_ emulated in a browser. You do realize
that the script which checks the URL can also be modified by the copycat?
Minifying CSS+HTML+JS as usual already gets you the most benefits, while being
good practice. This is shooting your own foot.

~~~
anatari
What? You are going to add a lock to your door that is going to

    
    
      - break your door by making it dependent on a key
    
      - use a easily reversible locking mechanism
    
      - slow the time it takes to enter your home
    

You do realize that any locksmith can open your lock in less than a minute?
Closing your door already gives you most of the benefits.

Only half kidding, but I get tired of people dismissing clever tricks because
it's not fool proof. Stealing is usually a function of reward/effort.

~~~
Bjartr
> Stealing is usually a function of reward/effort.

Except that for digital media it's a Smart Cow Problem[1], the effort is only
there for the first person who wants to circumvent it, then it becomes trivial
for everyone.

However, I'd suggest that the reason some on HN react strongly to these
suggestions is that they rely upon security through obscurity, which can be
dangerous by providing a false sense of security when none exists. While this
probably isn't as big a deal when it comes to your HTML and CSS, security is a
case of err'ing on the side of caution.

[1]<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smart_cow_problem>

~~~
anatari
Yes, I agree. However, I don't think website designs have as much of a smart
cow problem as say pop music, so your "DRM" is more likely to succeed its
goal.

------
nnq
The propeller site I'd consider flattering imitation, at least they are in a
totally different lob :)

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...

~~~
zeidrich
The propeller site actually uses the ideaware site's background image,
slightly blurred, as it's cloudscape background.

~~~
evanmoran
This is an amazing observation. I can't believe they used the actual image
from your front page on theirs.

------
captaincrunch
If it makes you feel any better, I wouldn't copy that design ever.

------
dasil003
We've been ripped off way worse than this. I'm talking about wholesale ripoff
of a full application, not just a tiny brochure site. What must have literally
been a multi-month development effort to rip off tens of thousands of lines of
javascript, css and html, and building a new backend from scratch to plug it
in to. Because they were an eastern bloc country there was no point in trying
to prevent it or even getting upset. The way I see it it's tremendously
flattering.

~~~
camus
serverside code cannot be ripped off unless there is a security flaw. If you
are concerned about something people might rip off, do it serverside. All the
front-end code will never be protected...

------
Frencil
We had a similar situation several years ago with our site:

<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.

------
KirinDave
Most of these seem pretty egregious, but am I the only one who thinks that
Gear Tree studios did enough work to differentiate their design?

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.

------
purge
We had a similar problem with a talentless rogue designer at my old agency.

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.

------
wilhow
We really can't prevent anyone from copying a design. It might not be the
ethical thing to do, but there no real way of stopping someone if that's their
goal. However I still wouldn't shame them. I would call them out in a more
gracious manner. Something like a list of those companies and title it
"Copying is the sincerest form of flattery" or along the same line.

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.

------
bpatrianakos
One of the worst things is that a lot of times the ripped off design, while
being really nice eye candy, doesn't suit the content at all. See the
submarine propeller company linked to in the post for a great example. The
information is organized and laid out in a visually pleasing way but at the
cost of completely ignoring what the user is looking for and what kind of
person the typical submarine propeller shopper is.

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.

------
jcromartie
There are lots of sites that lifted their copy from ideaware.co too. What kind
of design/development/branding shop can't come up with their own "About Us" or
"Process" page? Frankly I think this is even lazier than lifting the
markup/script to make the design work.

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

------
FarMcKon
Your post is confusing an unclear. Based on how I read it initially, I am
interpreting that post as you being are angry at site that look like yours, to
which I have to say 'tough luck'. The internet is all about copy-evolve-retry.
I'm sure 2/3 of your design ideas are based off someone else's innovation from
months or years ago. Unless you invented the the whole CSS/HTML/JS stack
yourself....

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.

------
fusiongyro
The propellers site is so similar I halfway wonder if it's a parody of your
site. "We handcraft propellers."

~~~
kybernetyk
It must be because I can't imagine anyone would prefer handmade propellers to
industrial manufactured ones.

------
isalmon
Just noticed - based on the IP lookups 3 of these websites are located in
Houston. Coincidence?

~~~
kybernetyk
Either those companies are with a bigger/popular hosting company (IIRC The
Planet was located in Houston and I guess their datacenter wasn't closed down
after their acquisition) or it's a link bait.

Either way - too few information to make an educated guess.

~~~
bryne
Or a Houston-based "web designer" ripping off a single design for local
clientele?

------
saravk
Initially i was of the "Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery" mindset.
But after going through a few of the sites i couldn't stomach the blatant rip
offs.

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.

------
bernardom
The best is RevoBlue: Their about_us page still has a map of Barranquilla,
Colombia, where ideaware is from! (Just scroll down on the "about us" page)

<http://www.revoblue.com/>

------
dustin
Is ebay one of those companies? <http://www.ebay.com/new>

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.

------
level09
This is a joke right ? or is it just a clever marketing trick ?

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 ..

------
bdfh42
Trouble is - web site design is very fashion oriented. You can tell a 2011
site from a 2012 site. I find a lot of sites are very similar and put it down
to a common fashion more often than copying. Font selection, icon colours and
general layout is bound to "cluster" around a limited range of values at the
leading edge. Look at the "please review our start-up" requests here on HN -
most of those web sites pretty near interchangeable.

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

~~~
zobzu
I always feel like its a flash website at first :P

But yeah, I didn't realize either so many just flat out copy website designs.
I guess this is a pretty common thing now :(

~~~
mnarayan01
It's _always_ been a common thing. Stuff like Google analytics just makes it
way easier to tell that they're actually copying _you_.

~~~
zobzu
Alright alright.

------
Kluny
Oh calm down. You had a good idea and started a trend. Don't whine about
copiers - you're the source of great ideas, so come up with another one. That,
or be the best at implementing this idea.

~~~
kaolinite
There's a difference between taking influence from a site and downright
stealing and even hot-linking assets.

------
davekinkead
Looks to me like you've now got a fantastic portfolio page.

"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.

------
d_j_s
You should call them out on twitter, they are more likely to make amends if
your shouting is visible to clients (future/current).

* <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

------
greendot
<http://www.capta360.com/> doesn't really look like a copy of your site.
Neither does <http://www.creativegerms.com/> or <http://pearlwebstudio.com/>.

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.

~~~
guilloiguaran
<http://www.creativegerms.com/about> and <http://pearlwebstudio.com> are
copying the text messages

<http://www.capta360.com/> copied the background photo

------
redm
There's a great 37 signals article somewhere about this same topic. The gist
is, that if you steal someone else's design, it's never going to meet your
needs properly because it's not born from your business. Especially true for
service based companies.

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.

------
greggman
I've seen my site copied verbatim several times. Clearly some bot just scraped
the entire site and posted it somewhere else. At first it upset me but after a
few minutes of righteous indignation I assumed it wasn't worth the time to
worry about it. The copies aren't getting much traffic AFAICT and I'm assuming
one way or another they'll eventually lead people back the original so I just
stopped looking.

------
OldSchool
Looks to be true, but if this is a day-to-day concern for your business things
must be running themselves. Consider it a badge of honor, like your
application being valuable and important enough to become warez. I'm guessing
your value-add proposition goes way beyond looking good on your first page. I
would however take concern with those so sloppy they are using your bandwidth.

------
andresmax
I'm getting a lot of email requests from people who want to license the
design/theme.

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

------
tehwebguy
Bummer, this is an uphill battle with almost no positive resolution for you.
The only upside I can see is that doing it this way will get your site some
traffic.

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.

------
jpswade
"Imitation Is The Best Form Of Flattery"

"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.

------
kkt262
Your design also has some similarities with the Mercurial Wordpress theme does
it not? I'm not sure which one came before, so I can't comment on who imitated
who.

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.

------
hablahaha
SMI Propellers: "Quality is never an accident; it is always the result of
intelligent effort..."

Man, isn't that the truth?

------
javajosh
On a purely technical basis, how can we tell that andres is not ripping off
one of these other sites? My gut tells me he isn't, but in the age of perfect
digital copies, assuming that justice was cheap and easy to obtain here (and
it clearly isn't) how would you establish primacy?

------
jotbe
When they are even referencing/loading resources from your server, you could
serve some "Thx for copying my design, the invoice is on its way."-images to
their pages: <http://altlab.com/htaccess_tutorial.html> ;)

------
scott_karana
Is it just me, or are there tons of redundant repaints of the same background
image in the "Recent Work" Section, with the black and white cellphone?

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

------
jesly
3 out of the 5 sites are Indian, <http://smacontech.com/> is a company run by
3 kids. If you give a look on the start up web design firms like this, you
will find a lot of copy cats.

------
wonderyak
I've had this happen to a number of clients; for the most part we were able to
get the sites changed/taken down through DMCA submissions (copyrighted
materials, art).

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

------
salahxanadu
Weak. Just because the parallax scrolling effect is pretty new and popular
these days doesn't mean that this guy 'invented' 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.

------
ldh
_This is just ridiculous, what makes people think they can just rip off your
work for free?_

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.

------
marizmelo
Well.. didn't Apple got some money from Samsung recently over design rip off?

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.

------
n9com
Why does crap like this make front page these days? Honestly, any half decent
site that gets featured on a CSS gallery gets ripped these days.

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

------
ryen
I wouldn't link directly to their sites. Only makes them rank higher in SEO

------
blobbers
Have you thought of using a javascript minify-er? At least then it would be
more obvious they copied you directly. It would also make it easier to inject
javascript that would mess with the copy-ers.

------
deadlysyntax
There are some blatant ripoffs amongst the list of links in the post, but I
think you should remove the last two. Pearl web studio and the germ one are
far from ripoffs of your site.

------
hnriot
I'm getting CocachingSessionExceeded errors visiting your blog and trying to
get to your site is blocked by our proxy server as having been detected to be
a threat!

------
lostlogin
When I open the submission on an iPhone, the link to the site moves when I try
to tap it - it isn't possible to use the link. Does anyone else get this
behaviour?

------
morturus
I'm pretty sure i've already seen those tiles somewhere aswell, is
<http://www.studiodvi.com> a candidate too?

------
niggler
I would have preferred that you just gave the URL (plaintext) with screenshot
and some code snippet. I wouldn't want those sites getting clicks.

------
jspaetzel
I'm most amazed by the last link you posted that copied it, they did not even
modify the background image. Only the logo and text were changed.

------
Mankhool
The slogan on dapaticalglobal.com is grammatically incorrect. If I were
looking for a firm, that would stop be from going any further . . .

------
andresmax
Thanks for the support guys, I'm not too mad but definitely wanted to bring
some attention to this.

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

------
ahoge
I'd be more worried about the horrible loading times. That's what will hurt
your conversion rates, not those copycat sites.

~~~
rhokstar
I'd like to see an A/B test. Clearly- if the features don't contribute to
higher revenue, why stick to it?

------
rschmitty
Well one good thing about the rip off sites is I'm able to see what you
designed originally while HN hammers your server!

------
seivan
Save the names of the people involved in a blacklist. Make a list of agencies
to avoid with these people in them.

------
deathfrag
Did anyone notice that most of them couldn't get the font correct. Coz the
morons must have never heard of custom fonts. Only one site did managed a
Google Web font, I guess. Ha ha...and that propeller thingy has some reputed
clients under its belt. I'm from India and I know the clients. You want me to
call them up and have some harmless fun from your side. I can act as if I'm
your legal agent. Kidding!

------
jasonwilk
I think 37 Signals is quite a bit more pissed off about their pricing page
being emulated by 10k+ startups.

------
rhokstar
Copying has been going on for centuries. If someone copied you, you're clearly
a leader. Take it in stride!

------
awkim
Isn't this inspired from <http://www.ebay.com/new> ?

------
josephwesley
It's even worse that some of these comps not only stole the design but also
stole the copy. Shameless.

------
bliker
I can't see much resemblance in capta360.com. What features do you consider
similar there?

------
aspinner
I would be flattered by them copying you, validating that you're at the top of
your game!

------
lucian1900
That last one is particularly bad. They didn't even try to make it look a bit
different.

------
karldanninger
All those other sites are complete shit compared to ideaware.co.

The only blatant ripoff is revoblue.com

------
lhnz
Looks like you could start selling this design and at least profit from these
people.

------
aaronsnoswell
RE: "Not sure how to proceed here."

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

------
jodi
You might want to add rel="nofollow" to your links.

------
L4mppu
To be fair your site design is pretty awesome.

------
misiti3780
you can probably add this one to the list: <http://newbirddesign.com/>

~~~
jasonlotito
Why? They are distinctly different, and unless I missed it, are copying none
of the assets.

Are you merely referring to the fact that they both "scroll" the same way, a
way which is _not_ unique to the OPs website?

Be careful when calling people out.

------
brianbreslin
with so many near identical knockoffs, is it possible someone has already made
a theme/template and is selling it?

------
jimsilverman
the propeller one made me lol. ripped off a design without any attempt of
fitting the design to the brand.

------
aren55555
I find this type of scrolling annoying.

------
danielwozniak
Imitation Is The Best Form Of Flattery

------
websitescenes
Did you invent the wheel too? lol...

------
ashrust
Here's another: hireup.net

------
alinspired
site certainly worth "learning", but copying completely is just lame

------
smartwater
If you had any class, you'd take them to court. Slander isn't doing you any
favors.

~~~
zschallz
How is it slander? It's pretty obvious that these companies did steal the
design (JavaScript and all).

------
xutopia
That's blatant!

------
websitescenes
lol, did you invent the wheel too?

------
SeanLuke
Two words:

Design Patent.

------
edouard1234567
open source your design.

