One of the cardinal sins in the design community is stealing someone’s work and calling it your own. About a month ago, a good friend notified me that his site and portfolio were completely ripped off by a guy he found on ThemeForest. The guy basically took his entire portfolio, slapped a new logo on it, and uploaded it to his domain. My friend was distraught about the whole situation and had no idea what to do. As a Christian, he wanted to help the person, and wasn’t sure what the best approach would be. Obviously, he wanted to get the stolen portfolio taken down. At the same time, he didn’t want to come off as merciless or cruel by completely embarrassing and discrediting him by blasting him throughout the halls of twitter and Facebook (which seems to be a common practice lately). This got me thinking: What’s the right way to deal with a design ripoff?
Step 1. Direct Contact
For most design ripoffs, it’s very simple to get a site taken down by simply sending an email to the offending party letting them know you know about their site. Some people take the nice guy approach and hand-craft a nice, civil email stating:
“Hi there, I noticed that your site bears a striking resemblance to my own. While I am flattered you like my site so much that you wanted to use it for yourself, will you please remove my design? Thank you.”
Some people prefer a very stern email or perhaps a phone call (if the ripoff artist was so kind to have left a phone number):
“Hey buttmonkey, thanks for stealing my design, I really appreciate it. At the very least you should have changed the links to my site so I wouldn’t see your !#$^@ referral links in my Mint stats, you #&$%#@ moron! If you don’t take it down immediately, my lawyer will be all over your butt like flies on a zebra. By the way, you’re a moron.”
For me, I like to give them the opportunity to remove the design, apologize and learn a lesson before being called out publicly and defamed (otherwise known as Step 2):
“Hi there, a friend of mine saw your site the other day and let me know that the design had been stolen from my website and used on yours. While I am flattered you like my work so much that you want to use it for yourself, I can’t say I approve of you taking it without permission. It would be appreciated if you could have the site taken offline or replaced with a new design within 24 hours or I will be forced to take further legal action.”
If they haven’t removed the site within 24 hours, I then proceed to…
Step 2. Public Callout
If I fail to generate a reply, the designer writes back saying they won’t remove it, or they completely ignore my request, I then proceed to step 2, which involves bringing as much light to the situation as possible in an effort to discredit the designer and force him or her to realize that there are a lot of passionate people out there who have a sincere HATRED for design ripoffs and would do just about anything to get them taken down and discredited. This public callout should occur on twitter, digg, flickr, basically anywhere designers follow your work, post it there and let the fury rain down. For some, it’s as simple as tweeting out the following message and simply waiting for the ReTweet brigade to do their thing:
“Attention twitter followers, please explain to @frankiegoestohollywood that ripping my portfolio design is not cool http://www.awesome.com”
For a lot of designers, this is actually the first step, mainly because they are alerted by someone on twitter so they simply retweet it to get it squashed immediately. However, I think it’s good form to first email or call to give them an opportunity to take it down, apologize, and move on, but some designers will quickly point out, “Well, if they aren’t going to bother asking me to use my design, why should I be nice about it?”
Step 3. Contact Their Hosting Provider
If public defamation of character and public ridicule are not enough to get the design taken down, you’re going to want to deal with someone at a higher level than the rip-off artist: their hosting company. In most cases, this person is going to be hosted by a low-cost provider like GoDaddy or Dreamhost or 1and1. I mean, if they’re too cheap or lazy to get their own design, they’re probably not interested in paying a lot for hosting. Just a hunch. Now, you are going to want to first do a WHOIS lookup to find out who registered the domain, where they registered it, and what nameservers they have the domain pointed at (which, in turn, will tell you who the host is). In the event they ARE with a hosting company and don’t have their own nameserver and personal hosting system (which would be pretty rare for someone that rips off design) you should be able to easily contact the hosting company and explain the situation. Simply show them your site, then direct them to the site of their customer who ripped your design off and you typically can get them booted off that host pretty quickly.
Step 4. Contact a Lawyer
For me, this is a last resort, but sometimes is necessary. If possible, consult with a lawyer that specializes in Intellectual Property because they will know the most about dealing with this sort of situation, especially in regards to trademarks, copyrights, and patents. In most cases, they will hit them with a Cease & Desist, which basically is a court order to stop using your design or be faced with a lawsuit or possible criminal charges. Hopefully it never goes this far, but honestly, it could happen to you and you need to be prepared to take any and all steps to ensure your hard work is not taken advantage of.
Step 5. Wall of Shame (Optional)
Now, if your name is Tim Van Damme and you’ve been ripped off by so many people you can barely keep track, I recommend putting together a site that showcases the various ripoffs and includes a (nofollow) link to their site (why give them any search engine juice?) to remind them every day that you know they ripped you off and they will be enshrined in your Wall of Shame until they decide it’s not worth the hassle anymore. Also, I would recommend signing their email address up for as much spam as possible, along with a daily email reminder with links to great design resources for learning how to design websites. Again, as mentioned, this step is entirely optional.