In one of the most comical ripoffs we’ve ever seen, inside or outside the wakeboarding industry, a new e-commerce shop has opened its doors for service. What makes this new shop, WakeAction.com notable is the fact that it looks virtually identical to industry leader and staple Wakeside.com. The similarities are not just skin deep though, after a little more investigation, it appears as though WakeAction has borrowed liberally from other aspects of Wakeside’s design and technology.
The aper also uses the same e-commerce software, which on it’s own isn’t all that remarkable. Taken together with the other similarities however, it’s obvious that the party responsible for designing and implementing the WakeAction site simply copied Wakeside’s model with minor changes to color, graphics, logo, etc. In addition to the visual and technological similarities, WakeAction also copied the same naming schemes and structures for the categories and products.
Before the prevalence of the Internet there was probably plenty of this unimaginative copying on a regional basis. Now the stakes of the game have changed, and any company which so ludicrously steals the intellectual and commercial property of another deserves the ridicule that comes to them. Hopefully consumers will vote their opinion with their wallets and send their business to the originator, and not the intimidator.
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