What should i do?

[.Abhishek]

Today i got the following message form ItsBrad:

Hello,
By the title of the PM you should see how annoyed I am, we'll I'm actually very pissed, your style on your Board Reloaded looks and awfully lot my free phpBB style, MyInvision, if you used my style then re edited it, why remove copyright.

He is saying that Board Reloaded's default style is based on his style MyInvision. But actually its not. It took me so much time to create a full custom style for my forum and now he is asking to put it down.

What should i do now? Do you feel my style is similar?

 

[iPhonefreak]

Unless I'm seeing something difference, I don't see any similarities at all.

 

[Watch Me Sink]

Tell him that he copied yours.

 

[Hissae2]

It doesn't even look the slightest bit similar to me :shrug: I would try explaining to him that it's not based on his theme at all, and if he argues with that I would just ignore him.

 

[VirusZero]

To be blunt, both skins use a blue and grey in their colour scheme... And blue/grey are so generic that they can't claim to own those two colours when others use them.

And from what I've seen their skin is a black, grey and blue one. While yours is a lighter blue and darker grey with no white and black. So they really don't look that similar. (I don't really think someone is going to look at those two skins and think they're that close. So I'm not really sure how he came to that conclusion...)

Sure both sites also have a sidebar, but tons of sites have sidebars so it's really not that huge an issue (unless the sidebar code was taken from them).

Plus to be blunt, they released their skin as a free download. (So it's not like this was a custom skin for a specific client. Which if that were the case and the skin was replicated exactly, then yeah you should remove the skin.) But where this is a freely available skin that only shares very vague similarities. ( I haven't thoroughly examined the code behind either skin so I'm going only on what I can see... if the code is theirs then yes, definitely remove it.) But since your skin doesn't look that close at all and you've stated you created it yourself from scratch, I'd say send them a message back like:

Hello Brad.
The skin on Board Reloaded has not been copied from you. Nor is it, in any part, based on your work. (Which is why you don't see your copyright on our skin.) This skin was created from scratch specifically, by me, for our site.

I respect your creative talents and rights and so I would not use your work without provide providing proper credits.

If you have further questions or concerns, please don't hesitate to contact me again.

- .Abhishek, Admin of Board Reloaded.

And then don't remove your skin/theme.

If they want to press forward to try to get it removed then the onus is on them to prove that your theme contains parts of their work. (And an individual bit of CSS like:
.maintitle {background-image: url();}

is not enough since TONS of sites use that. They'd need much larger chunks of exactly the same code or be able to prove the images were theirs. And since you've indicated you made the skin yourself from scratch then you have nothing to fear since they won't be able to provide evidence to prove it was copied. Can't provide evidence of copying if no such evidence exists, right?)

 

[Brad]

Okay, you don't see simularities because my style has style options, allowing user to have sidebars and what not, I generally got curious due to the fact, I tried setting my style apart on the phpBB Software, your style to me looked alot like it.


Also I like how I sent you a PM saying I thought it look the same, then you started having a ramble saying I told you to put my copyright in the footer.

Tell him that he copied yours.

As for you, seems legit to be honest, my style was published before his site existed, so kinda backfired didn't it.

 

[Luke]

Okay, you don't see simularities because my style has style options, allowing user to have sidebars and what not, I generally got curious due to the fact, I tried setting my style apart on the phpBB Software, your style to me looked alot like it.


Also I like how I sent you a PM saying I thought it look the same, then you started having a ramble saying I told you to put my copyright in the footer.

Tell him that he copied yours.

As for you, seems legit to be honest, my style was published before his site existed, so kinda backfired didn't it.

That theme looks just like one Terry made, just different grey.

 

[.Abhishek]

Sorry if i said something to you Brad that i shouldn't say. Since my mothertongue is not english that's why sometimes i don't understand what others try to say. I have changed Board Reloaded's theme and i hope this theme won't bother anyone. Thanks everyone for your support.