Last week, online game company Zynga sued Vostu for total infringement of their games. The report can be found at several places including http://techcrunch.com/2011/06/16/war-zynga-sues-the-hell-out-of-brazilian-clone-vostu/. Of course Vostu had something to say about it whether it makes sense or not… but interestingly both these companies are well funded (though the funding is not comparable). Anyways, we are not going to discuss who is right and who is wrong etc., The verdict is already out there in the street (web) and this story will be interesting to watch. But, we had our own story to tell that took place in the same week.
While we were doing due diligence of a prospective client, we ran into a competitor’s website. When I checked out their website and started browsing the pages, we’re like, ‘did someone iFrame into our site?’ The content was on their homepage was so familiar. Then I looked at their navigation and IA schematics… they were also exactly like ours. At that point, it can’t be a coincidence… as our IA of top level breakdown of sections was completely unique and original and no one had it. We categorized all our content into 4 basic groups in IA. What, How, Why, and Who; the questions a client may ask when working with a company like ours that doesn’t enjoy big branding in the marketplace. We knew that it was very original, and we are convinced that no one else had it.
I go and look at the footer of each page of this offending website and it had their copyright on it… wait a minute, my content, my images, my IA schematics, (and there’s more… we’ll walk you through some of that further!) and then you put your copyright on it! Will someone tell these guys copyright doesn’t mean “your right to copy” but instead it means that “exclusive rights are granted to the original author of original work, and you cannot copy it without permission from the original author… let alone putting your own copyright disclaimer on it”?

Here is a screenshot of the offending website’s homepage which I pretty much circled every pixel of it as there is nothing original there.

They even took some of our original focus area such as Idea Incubation. We don’t claim that we have copyright on the word “Idea Incubation”, but honestly how many software development companies talk about and are interested in incubating a startups’ idea? We’re one of the few… and apparently so are these guys!  LOL.  There’s also the same content word for word… are these guys our long lost twins or something?!

 

In our “Why” section, we candidly talk about why our clients should choose us. And, it’s the same <CTRL>+C and <CTRL>+V on the offending website, though I have to give it to them that they did a good job of replacing our company name with theirs.

 

They say “they are different”… wait, we said that and they repeated! Yep, they are right. They are different… they are so creative that they copy other’s content and even their key strengths word for word and claim it their own. I wonder where they steal the code for their client’s solutions!

 

Now here is the kicker… check out our Vision and you can see they magically share the same vision word for word. At that point, I was getting goose bumps!

 

At this point, my vision was getting blurred… and I had to check our “Top 10 Reasons Why a Client Should Choose Us”.

Hmm… it looks like they didn’t like the top 10 format, so they just removed the numbering and changed the sequence from 1 to 10. Wow… you could really do that?!

 

And, the screenshot below just tells you how much respect they have for their clients that they didn’t even bother changing the list of companies/clients our associates are associated with.

 

I also noticed that these guys might be little busy because they haven’t caught up with our site updates in the last six months or so. So, they are little behind the skill set below… but I’m sure they will catch up very shortly as they are “different”.

 

At the end, I wasn’t sure if I should be happy that I found another company with great minds behind it that matches our vision and philosophy or should I get disappointed that there are companies and people out there that think that the marketplace and customers are idiots?!

 

All clients should think twice about doing business with these sorts of companies. Do you really think that the clients are so naïve and you can really lie your way into a client relationship? If a company or its founders can’t afford to have an original vision, values and culture, what are they going to offer to their clients and the community?

 

Anyways, we sent a C&D Letter (Cease and Desist) to them and alerted them to take their website down immediately while they remedy the situation. We had our lawyers draft the C&D and ready to react if this company doesn’t comply with the C&D notice. Fortunately for them, they took their site down and responded back to us that they will not indulge in this activity in the future.

 

But, we do have to share this story with our clients, our competitors, and in general anyone active on the web world as copyright infringement is much more frequent than you think. Though not all copyright infringements stoop to this level of copycat nature, just know that there are people out there. Your first line of defense is to document the infringement, send C&D letter (preferably drafted by your attorney), and if they don’t comply proceed with legal action.

 

I hope we’re able to share this story with a little entertainment, offer a glimpse into the world of the copycats, and a quick way of how to handle those situations. Now here is a teaser for you… If you noticed, we haven’t explicitly specified the offending company name and the people involved that we interacted with, and the interactions itself. I saved that for another blog post as it’s as exciting as the part 1; I promise you that! Now stay tuned…