My wife owns (and at the time of this posting is selling) a dog training business in Negaunee township called Tandem Dog Training. A new-to-the-scene competitor (or her designer) apparently felt that my wife’s website was worth copying. Take a look….
My wife’s website (that we built):
The ripoff:
While the main difference is that the copy is of lesser quality (yes, I’m biased, but still)… if you’re not seeing the plagiarism, the main points are:
- Colored background with rounded content corners
- Dog with drop shadow laying on the top right corner
- Two-tone menu with a thin border underneath
- Content: text on the “about” page – sentences are the same in many cases with a single word “changed”
- Content: classes are almost identical, just slightly different prices
To give an example of some of the text duplication, read the following…
Example 1
TANDEM: “Hi, I’m Julie Lyle, the owner of Tandem. I have had a passion for all animals, and specifically dogs, since I was very young.”
RHODES: “Hello, my name is Jennifer Rhodes-Bingham. This all started when I was eight years old.”
Example 2
TANDEM: “My immediate family includes husband, Nathan, owner of the The U.P. Web Maestro; step-children: Josh (16), Joey (15), and Kari (13); son Raymond (3), German Shepherd Dog/Doberman mix Shelby (10), Labrador Retriever Ramsey (4) & Doberman Pinscher Duncan (1).”
RHODES: “My immediate family consists of my husband Adam, and my four dogs. I have two Greyhounds Beth Ann (7) and Foxy (3), a Golden Retriever Ace (5), and my Italian Greyhound Kylie (5).”
Looking at the code behind the pages, there are further “similarities”… for example, the keyword meta tag…
TANDEM: Dog Training, Marquette Dog Training, Puppy Classes, Dog Training Classes, Obedience, Dog Behavior, Negaunee, Michigan, Daycare, Dog Day Care, Doggie Daycare
RHODES: Dog Training, Puppy Classes, Dog Training Classes, Obedience, Dog Behavior, Negaunee, Michigan, Rhodes to Obedience, On the Rhodes to Obedience, Rhodes, Jennifer Rhodes, Jennifer Rhodes-Bingham, Jennifer Rhodes Bingham
Changing the order of things isn’t creating, it’s copying.
I can’t be sure whether this was something done entirely by the “designer” or if it was also the website owner, but if it was the owner, the designer has a responsibility in cases like this. Unless specifically stated otherwise, when content is created and put on the Web, it is the copyrighted intellectual property of the publisher. When I contacted the designer of the On The Rhodes to Obedience website, Heather Pringle, this was her response…
“I’m not sure what you are talking about. She has a dog obedience class. She told me what pages she absolutely wanted on the site so that is what I had to design around. I had 2 designs for her and this is the one she choose. I do know that Tandem is another dog training school which is similar to Rhodes to Obedience. It is a business website so there are going to be similarities between two websites of the same business. All the code and logo design are original and the pictures are property of the site owner and are used with her permission.”
…which doesn’t quite address the point. It’s not specific images that were copied, but the design and content. Not much different than handing in a term paper in college that you copied from your roommate. While on one hand this sort of thing is annoying, imitation is supposedly the sincerest form of flattery.
