Plagiarism Today - Latest Comments in Web Design Plagiarism

Re: Web Design Plagiarism

Anonymous — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 16:01:56 -0000

Thank you for this article. I have never had an issue, because I tell clients to send me samples of websites that they like, and that I will use them for inspiration. I explain I can't just copy the website. I now have a client that did just that - I changed colors, added a header for his logo - rounded things out - changed the layout a bit, and had an "inspired" design. The client sent me back an image he modified with Photoshop, and told me to remove the header, change the colors to black and grey. He basically made it look exactly like the site he sent me for inspiration. It is nice to know - that since I coded the site from scratch, and created my own images, I am not plagiarizing the site - but it still does not feel right. Normally I would tell him to take a hike - but I really need the money, and he has a second site (that will pay double the first site) for me to do. I know if I tell him to take a hike - he will find a different developer to create it for him, and since I coded everything from scratch, I guess I can sleep well. If I ever hear from the original site creator, I will refer him to my client, and the email the client sent me with the image and instructions. He can fight that fight. Didn't even leave my website for the link, as I am a bit concerned what the other developers reading this might think. :) Though it might be nice to hear from others that have been put in a similar situation.

Re: Web Design Plagiarism

domain name registration — Mon, 29 Nov 2010 22:40:21 -0000

this is a great article!..these things are sometimes inevitable..thanks for posting..

Re: Web Design Plagiarism

Info — Wed, 24 Nov 2010 13:24:18 -0000

Can it be any more apparent than in this example?

http://www.nature.com/ni/in...

http://cathlabdigest.com/

flattery?

Re: Web Design Plagiarism

Jonathan Bailey — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 23:27:54 -0000

The question here is were you an independent contractor or an actual employee? If you were a contractor, you still have copyright in those works and you would be able to file DMCA notices and take other action as such designs If you were an employee, it is considered a work for hire and the company that went out of business owns those rights. They likely sold their copyrights when they went under as part of liquidation so the trick would be to find who holds those rights and write them.

Hope that helps!

Re: Web Design Plagiarism

designer — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 18:36:16 -0000

I have a question: I designed websites for a company that later went down. My project manager had access to all of the PSDs that I designed. He later started his own business and listed tons of my designs as sites his company has designed. Legally I don't think I have rights to them (since I designed them for the orginal company that went out of business), but neither does he. Can anything be done? I can see listing sites you designed for another company in your personal portfolio, but starting a company with mockups of someone elses work is soo wrong. Can I do anything?

Re: Web Design Plagiarism

Jackie — Sun, 04 Feb 2007 11:01:29 -0000

Great article.
I, unfortunately, got to experience all of this first hand not to long ago and with a very stubborn "thief". We finally succeed in getting him to change the index page and even though just about every page is almost exact my client eventually got tired of the fight and let things go.
Your article would have been a great resource at the time and I'll be sure to bookmark it for the future.

Re: Web Design Plagiarism

Matthijs — Thu, 03 Aug 2006 06:47:43 -0000

Great article again Jonathan.

One advice for anyone looking for "inspiration": even if you don't commit copyright infringement by writing all code yourself and designing all images yourself, be careful. If a design is too similar or looks a bit familiar, sooner or later people will find out and publicly nail you. And that's not a pleasant experience, to say the least. Certainly if you didn't mean to rip someone off and you really did your best to design something original.