While AsiaPundit admits to schadenfreude over the ‘censoring’ of Mahathir Mohamad, AP generally doesn’t relish in the misfortunes of others. Still, AP’s first reaction when hearing of Dan Harris’s recent plight was to chuckle:
Is Beijing Law Firm Violating Copyright Laws?
My blog assistant (everyone should have one) just e-mailed me to ask if I had seen the relatively new Blawg of China. I had not, so I followed the link he gave me and was instantly shocked; This blog’s design appears to be a direct rip-off of my law firm’s website, which our Russian design team Fokadan/3dots.ru had copyrighted.
Compare my firm’s website, here with the Blawg of China, here. What do you think? Seems awfully close to me. Is this a counterfeit? A fake? Why would one law firm do this to another?
Looks to me like there is a big problem here and I am going to be contacting our friends at Fokadan to advise them of this situation.
Copyright violation or not, I would have expected better.
AsiaPundit and Dan have corresponded - through comments and through e-mail - about the ability and willingness of Chinese authorities to enforce intellectual property laws. AP has always been far more skeptical than Dan. For example, see our recent posts on Xiangyang Market (here and here). With that, the irony of this was amusing.
That said, Dan does have AP’s sympathies. And AP hopes that Lehman Law conceeds the contested design to Harris & Moure. A dispute over web design copyright - even if infractions were likely done without knowledge - surely would deter clients from the firm’s Intellectual Property Practice.
April 26th, 2006 at 10:44 pm
Despite what has happened here to my own website, I am not ready to concede the fight with Asia Pundit over the enforceability of IP laws in China. If this were a U.S. company that had done this, I would be reacting the exact same way.
My goal here is to spread this incident as far and wide as possible and simply embarrass the Beijing law firm into revising its offending web site. We will see if that works.
As an attorney, I know full well that litigation is nearly always expensive and is always to be avoided, if possible.
Thank you Asia Pundit for posting this.
April 30th, 2006 at 8:10 am
This issue has already been resolved. This was just a case where the webdesigner changed the design and posted it without informing us on having taken another site as its template. When the information reached us we have immediately responded and changed the design. There is no ill will here whatsoever and these things just happen once in a while especially with designs in China. Our response has been to immediately change the design and we would appreciate the postings on the subject should be either removed or altered to reflect what happened and what actions were taken to remedy the situation.
May 9th, 2006 at 7:16 am
Mr. Metaal’s is correct in stating that there is no ill will. Their site was promptly changed
and the matter is over.
Dan Harris
www.harrismoure.com (the original site)