What are the similarities? The big picture? WOW! Never seen that before? Apart from that, the two sites don’t have anything in common that leads me to the word “similarities”.

If it’s just the big picture, then this site is also a copy: http://www.jointhegolfers.com/

Like I said: The Internet is still young, and variations not that many… Yet.

My answer is, of course, no, but I try different techniques to convince them without disappointing them.

It’s often best to just point out that aping someone else’s design is self-defeating. If you pay lots of money for a clone and someone points it out, you’ve gambled and lost twice.

I also remind clients how quickly information travels on the web, especially when it comes to angry designers who will loudly protest the theft. If you appeal to the client’s desire for a website that’s actually profitable, they have to also be convinced that cheap knockoffs aren’t going to get respect, aka visiblity, aka traffic, aka money, and that almost always turns their head around.

I’m in the unenviable position of working for a small web/graphic design business, and I can’t tell you how many times a client will come in and want *exactly* what another site has. They don’t want us to design something original, they want to copy another site entirely.

I have had my work ripped off before, and its not a good feeling. I just wish I knew how to dissuade my clients (or even my bosses sometimes) from taking that route.

Any ideas?

Again, forget the legality or copyrights or licenses or other fine print for a second and just consider the ‘common sense’ judgment the Golf Channel failed to show. They’d clearly seen the site before since they advertised on it. And when asked about the redesign similarities, they did not (from the sound of it) offer the chance for any dialogue. That’s two demonstrations of bad judgment from an organization that should know better.

There are tons of layouts that are just like this, it obviously doesn’t help that they are both in the same industry but this is nothing new. Exec at these big companies sometimes just say here is the site I like, lets remake it. At the end of the day nav, logo, banner ad and search are in the same spots, everything else is different with the carousel being close but far from the same. The way they have done the background I have seen many times before and honestly if I was thinking of designing a golf site I think I would have good for a similar background, it just plays well for the imagery of the industry.

They are both well done sites, Gold Channels is highly inspired but not a rip off.