I met with our lawyers yesterday and am posting this notice on their advice.  I met with them concerning a serious case of copyright infringement by one of our competitors, Step West.  Step West is a firm which describes itself as an internship and working holiday programs provider.  They occupy the space and have some of the same staff as an old company called Wish Canada – you can read what people say about Wish here and here.

Late last week we discovered that Step West had stolen the content from our website – VancouverInternships.ca – and had posted it on their website in order to represent it as their own.  Vancouver Internships Work and Travel Providers are Canada’s Internship Experts, with the best programs and services in the market – it’s natural that if they were to steal materials from anyone, it would have to be us.  They took everything from program names, descriptions, to FAQs and requirements.

With the assistance of our lawyers and the helpful people at Netfirms, we were able to force StepWest to remove the VancouverInternships.ca-copyrighted materials from their site.

However, we are concerned that our copyrighted-materials may have been disseminated in other forms, for example in brochures or manuals, or application forms, or emails etc…  And that is the purpose of this notice.  We are not asserting that this has been done, but in the event that it has, and you as a student, a host company, or a school are in the possession of any of these materials then please be advised that these are Vancouver Internships materials.  The programs described are Vancouver Internships programs and the services are Vancouver Internships services.  If you wish to participate in the programs described in those materials then please contact us directly and we would be happy to assist you.

To check and see if you are in possession of pirated Vancouver Internships materials, please visit our students website here: www.vancouverinternships.ca/students and our schools and agents website here: http://vancouverinternships.ca/index2.htm

Update 09/08/2010

Unfortunately our concerns have proven true.  We have recently come across an example of our materials posted on the website of a school that works with StepWest.

Advice

If you are looking for reputable internship or working holiday placement in Vancouver – while we can’t speak one way or another for the quality of Step West – we can whole-heartedly recommend any of the following providers in the Vancouver area:

VancouverInternships.ca – Naturally we recommend working with us.  But we’re picky and maybe only 10% of people get past the screening process.  If you want to look on your own, try our internship listings site: www.canadianinternships.ca .

InternexCanada.com – They are our largest competitor, and the first in the market in Vancouver.  They offer many of the same programs we do, though with more of a working holiday focus.

GoInternational.ca – They are our highest quality competitor, with offices in Vancouver and Whistler.  We have a lot of respect for this company.  They offer excellent work and travel programs.

Swap.ca – Run by a collection of student associations, SWAP controls their own visas – they offer assistance to help you find a working holiday placement – but are very much DIY.