I first learned about this when Baddie plurked about it. I continued to read his blog post where I found out how a certain “web design company” called WebSapient that claims to be “a leading Web Designing, Development & Internet Marketing Company” blatantly copied a Filipino freelance designer’s entire portfolio. Below are the screenshots I took as soon as I finished reading about the story. (click on images to view larger version)

The Original Portfolio

The Copycat Portfolio

Not only did they rip-off one of Marco’s works but his ENTIRE portfolio. If that isn’t a blatant rip-off of somebody’s work, I don’t know what is.

According to their About Us page, WebSapient claims to be:

“an experienced and well established web design company specializing in website design and e-commerce development,”.

and

“Our team comprises of the most brilliant and skillful people in the industry with collective experience in Designing Web 2.0, graphic design, website development, Flash animation, Search Engine Optimization, Link Building and e-commerce programming.”

I’m not sure about the other skills that they mentioned above, but for sure I know that they’re good at one thing and that’s Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V (Copy and Paste). I bet even their list of clients and the clients testimonials are either ripped-off from someone else’s site or bogus.

I had my share of experiences with copycats, including one with a copycat blogger who copied several of my posts word-for-word without my permission or even giving me credit for my work (he later took down the posts and apologized after I contacted him) and the most recent one, a Filipino blogger who scraped my blog theme (premium theme/single license) and used it for his own but forgot to remove the links to my page. But all of that doesn’t come close to this.

Marco Palinar – the Site Guy, works as a freelance designer and his portfolio is his “life”, it’s his bread and butter. For someone to take his work, copy it and put it up as their own is not only plagiarism, copy-right infringement but absolutely wrong.

As of this moment, WebSapient have already pulled down their “portfolio” and replaced it with an “under construction” page. Too bad for them, a lot of bloggers already have evidence (screencaps) of their bogus portfolio. To other designers out there, watch out! Your portfolio might be next!

To WebSapient, of all the designer portfolio’s you could rip-off you chose Marco’s. Wrong move. You messed with the wrong guy. Now, you’re sooooo screwed! Or as Baddie would say it “Googlescrewed”!

Other bloggers who posted about this story:

• Liz
• Baddie
• Ade
• Phao
• Ideographer
• Suptekeps
• Technograph

Help spread the word! WebSapient needs to learn a lesson from this same goes for the other bogus “web design” sites out there that they can’t just rip-off somebody’s work and get away with it.

Please DIGG this WebSapient rips off ENTIRE portfolio off freelance designer