I think you are confused about what we are most upset about. You don't even mention the DMCA once in your comment. The DMCA, and abuse of it, is something that gets HN's dander up. As far as we can tell, LV perjured themselves, either intentionally or through ignorance of what copyright actually means. The result is that legal material will have been taken off the internet for 10 days, with no repercussions, despite the (presumably) false claims made by LV. It is in this context that people are breaking out the pitchforks. If LV had made a blog post complaining about the "rip", they probably would have gained HN's sympathy.

Reading through the comments, I do see a few mentions of the DMCA, but there's plenty of "they don't own turquoise!" type comments as well.

If you're upset they used the DMCA (a legal tool made specifically for this type of situation), I guess that's fair, if slightly myopic.

I don't think you understand the DMCA. It is NOT a legal tool for this type of situation.

The DMCA ("Digitam Millenium COPYRIGHT Act") provides the take-down mechanism as a means to take down copyright infringing content, and in exchange gives the hosts of that content a safe-harbor[1].

So when people say "they don't own turquoise", those people are correct. LayerVault does not and can not hold a copyright on turquoise, or on their style of icon, and thus does not have the right to issue a copyright DMCA take-down notice for content made in the same style as their own.

[1] If a host follows the DMCA take-down process, in theory they're safe from being sued for unwittingly and unintentionally hosting copyrighted content. in practice, those suites tend to happen anyway, with the claim that the infringement was knowing -- see also youtube, megavideo).

And LV isn't going after them for turquoise, but for specific illustrations, which are copyrightable.

You're jumbling what LV actually did with the simplification of what they did.

> And LV isn't going after them for turquoise, but for specific illustrations, which are copyrightable.

No. The illustrations were not direct copies.

No, they're not.

The DMCA takedown notice must meet each element as specified by law. In particular, the notice must explicitly identify the copyrighted work as well as the material claimed to be infringed.

In their DMCA notice, LV failed to meet the requirements for a valid DMCA takedown notice. By failing to specify their own work, as well as what materials in particular were allegedly infringing, they ensured that their claim was invalid on face.

As a result, LV isn't going after anyone. An invalid takedown notice carries no duty to act on the part of the service provider. It, quite simply, doesn't exist. The really remarkable thing here isn't that LV filed an invalid notice--it happens all the time, particularly when they're automated in other circumstances--but that Github acted on it at all as an invalid takedown notice is not considered by the courts to impart actual knowledge of infringement.

In effect, if it's invalid, the takedown notice doesn't exist.

AFAIK, the DMCA notice did not list specific images. Have you found the specific images that were copied?

Sadly, no. I'm mostly going off Allan's comments on the DN thread where he talks about them using their illustrations.

And also than they haven't been running around issuing DMCA's to every _other_ flat UI style everything.

Clearly, they believe specific assets were copied to the point that a DMCA was appropriate. Pending a full post from LV, I'm giving them the benefit, as I'm certainly not giving the benefit of the doubt to the designers who so thoroughly ripped LV's style.

Should that post never come, or its contents show LV as trying to enforce a copyright on something that was merely "inspired" and not copied, I'll change my tone.

It doesn't matter. A valid DMCA takedown notice is fully self-contained. There's no follow-up, no sending someone to a blog post, or anything else. If it's not in the takedown, it's not material to the claim.

Refer to Perfect 10, Inc. v. Google if you're curious.

"Drew inspiration" is not proper justification for a DMCA notice. The fact that they're illegally misusing that law is why I'm walking away from this with a very negative opinion of LayerVault.

It is when it crosses the line into actual theft, which three of those icons apparently did.

You have a very poor understanding of DMCA if you think that. There is no way that law can apply here.

Have you seen the icons so you can judge it for yourself?

I have. At best, it's inspired by the LV ones.

Actually under no circumstances whatsoever can copying an icon cross the line into actual theft. It's possible to cross the line into actual copyright infringement.

Yeah, if the icon in discussion is pixel for pixel identical to the "original", including the dithering and anti-aliasing, that would prove copying.

But they have just similar concepts and colors. One black shoe might seem similar to another, but they don't infringe on copyright. One fashion creation from Zara might be quite similar to another one from a no-name, but if they slightly move one button or pocket, it's a new design.

I agree with this. I'm just pointing out that without even observing the icons in question I can assert that no theft occurred.

It's becaused they misused the DMCA to force removal of content that, while inspired by them, they actually don't own the copyright of. Vis., they are using the DMCA illegally to remove legal content.

I'm not sure how they "misued" the DMCA. The law has specific mechanisms for notifying a hosted service of material which violates your copyright. If LV believes the work violates their copyright, they're well within their rights to request it be taken down.

You might like the draconian nature of the laws mechanisms but it's not a "misuse". It's just "I don't like it when people use it."

They misused the DMCA because they did not own the copyright of the content they filed a DMCA against, plain and simple, and they made specific claims in the DMCA otherwise. Just because the icons were similar does not make that a copyright violation. LV either abused the DMCA out of ignorance or dishonesty. There is no other possibility here, and they deserve every bit of negative sentiment that has resulted against them.

They believe they do. So it was neither ignorance nor dishonesty. _You_ don't think they do.

Again, you and LayerVault don't seem to understand copyright.

Here's an example. There's a famous iPhone game called Fruit Ninja. There's another game called Veggie Samurai. Total ripoff in every imaginable way, but completely legal.

Copyright means you can't make direct copies or derivative works of my stuff. It doesn't mean you're not allowed copy all my ideas.

And you don't seem to understand what LV is actually alleging.

And neither do they (LV).

Trademark is not copyright.

The DMCA is for direct copies of IP. This dispute is better resolved with a civil court case because the ownership is non-obvious. It was a very clear misuse of the DMCA and I hope the victim receives some compensation.

I have yet to see any evidence that the Flat UI folks violated any copyrights. It doesn't look like the Flat UI guys made verbatim copies of any of LV's art, nor does it look like they took LV's art and altered it to hide its origins.

It looks more like someone came from the viewpoint of "let's make some icons like LayerVault's," which may or may not be an IP violation, but it certainly is not a violation of copyright.

If LV knows differently, they certainly don't appear to be interested in telling us how they know, hence the pitchforks.

> Any designer would look at Flat UI and immediately realize that they drew inspiration from LayerVault. The similarities aren't minor, in either style, tone, or techniques.

What it boils down to is that there was no actual copyright infringement. If you look at the side-by-sides of the alleged infringement, it's kind of silly.

Even laying aside the heart of the issue, did they "rip off" the gear icon, the newspaper icon, or the chat icon? Did they "rip off" the general color scheme or look-and-feel? Or are those merely representative of a minimalist flat school of design which is currently in vogue?

How many freelance designers would you have to contract to make a "settings" icon, or an "interlocking gears" icon before you got back a (clean-room) design which looked even more like LV's than the one in question? Same goes for the newspaper and the chat icon. And is there any direct inspiration going on there (designer laying eyeballs on LV's design and then drawing ours a day or a month later) - probably not. And we could make the designs all clustered a lot tighter if we specifically asked for one that used very few high-contrast colors or a "flat" style.

If you then presented 10 of these farmed-out icon designs to a panel of designers, and told them that some of them had been ripped off of others, they would probably have some pretty strong opinions on which those were. And they would be wrong.

With LayerVault I saw similarities to Always With Honor, Bobby McKenna, or hundreds of other artists doing the exact same visual style with UI design. All artists and designers copy, distort, rehash, re-contextualize. We have championed this process and those artists for hundreds of years.

> realize that they drew inspiration from LayerVault

if (inspiration.drawnfrom("us")) { file.DMCA(); }