Comments on: MWI’s Website Ripped Off by Swanson Holland

By: Joshua Steimle

Joshua Steimle — Fri, 16 Mar 2007 18:38:40 +0000

Well, that's certainly an interesting comment coming from somebody who has ripped off one of our websites.

By: Brian Millgrath

Brian Millgrath — Fri, 16 Mar 2007 16:15:24 +0000

Looks like you have too much time on your hands… Who cares at this point?

By: Joshua Steimle

Joshua Steimle — Thu, 21 Sep 2006 05:47:38 +0000

In yet another update, the Swanson Holland website now appears to be for a publishing company whose logo looks suspiciously like the FranklinCovey logo. For looking like it, it's the exact same logo. Color, shape, size, etc. It's pretty obvious they just copied and pasted the web version.

By: Joshua Steimle

Joshua Steimle — Wed, 15 Mar 2006 04:10:17 +0000

Interesting, their website now appears to be redirecting to the City of Houston’s website. Oh well, I guess we had our fun while it lasted.

By: Anthony Haun

Anthony Haun — Fri, 24 Feb 2006 04:08:24 +0000

Can you take any legal action?
I like how you tracked them. That is really funny!

By: Clifton

Clifton — Tue, 07 Feb 2006 21:26:29 +0000

At least your design is good enough to be ripped off. That’s rewarding to a degree, right?

By: Joshua Steimle

Joshua Steimle — Tue, 31 Jan 2006 20:14:13 +0000

I was wondering about that. Agilix is in Utah, so is MWI. Chris Taylor, who designed the MWI site, has also done work for Agilix. Agilix does a lot of work with HP, and at http://www.swansonholland.com/company/index.html SH says they were formed by two former HP employees, Jason Samsonite and Jason Holland. How many degrees of separation? Not many. Oh, and on that same page I like one of the lines they put in: "We didn't pioneer the web, but along the way we have made some very significant improvements to the sites you may visit." So you see, they're actually admitting to not creating anything, they just ripoff what other people have done and "make it better". Although I fail to see where the word "significant" comes into play...the only thing they changed on the site they stole from us was the logo.

By: Kyle

Kyle — Tue, 31 Jan 2006 16:01:13 +0000

I think I know how they found you. http://www.swansonholland.com/work/index.html Scroll down there is an "agilix" site, which chris taylor orginally designed that looks a lot like that comp shot and nothing like what agilix currently has up. And of course chris designed the MWI site. If they are working with agilix, maybe they pointed them to MWI.com and said, well we like this.

By: Joshua Steimle

Joshua Steimle — Mon, 30 Jan 2006 15:02:05 +0000

It occurred to me that this might be some 14-year old kid working from home who’s new to the ways of the industry and is just barely starting out, trying to learn how to build websites, and to begin he’s copying a website, perhaps with the intentions of changing it in order to learn more about design/html/css. He’s not malicious, he’s just experimenting and learning, and perhaps doesn’t even seriously expect to make any money, this is more just for fun.

Of course, this is only a hypothetical statement. But I usually try to find some way to give someone the benefit of the doubt. On the other hand, if this is a grown adult who’s just lazy and incompetent, that’s another matter.

By: Tyler Garlick

Tyler Garlick — Mon, 30 Jan 2006 04:39:44 +0000

I can’t believe that a corporation would do that. I mean I’m a fan of MWI’s site and all, but there is an extent to which you can “utilize design ideas.” To me, that’s plagery of design…. where’s the creativity?