Why is it a weird assumption? Their blog post shows an e-mail from Daniel (the person they are lambasting) that says "Your company has first-class UI/graphics design chops and I will certainly keep MetaLab in mind when bidding out future projects that require such services."
Boilerplate perhaps, but generally if a company is willing to rip off your designs for use in their own internal concepts, I would take that as a sign that they like what you are doing.
I mean, I think this whole thing is stupid, but if they've shown they'll do it once, what's to stop from doing it again? Why would they hire you after that?
