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LayerVault Sends DMCA Takedown Letter re Flat-UI

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Re: LayerVault Sends DMCA Takedown Letter re Flat-UI

#301

Post by craigching »

enra wrote: post #177

When the Flat UI was released, I was waiting for Layervaults response. In their defence, the style, colors, some of the icons are very close to Layervaults, so I can understand their frustration. I have no doubt that designmodo had more than "inspiration" from Layervault. Probably they didn't break copyright, but basically they copied the style and made it a commodity (this is like the Svbtle thing all over again). F…

I think that if they hadn't gone DMCA on Design Modo there would be a lot more sympathy here. Until LV shows that copyright was infringed (show us the exact copies), I'm on the side of "the DMCA was used incorrectly here and even maliciously."

Re: LayerVault Sends DMCA Takedown Letter re Flat-UI

#302

Post by cooldeal »

ricardobeat wrote: post #300
cooldeal wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My best guess is that most designers are young ones(contrast perception decreases with age) using (retina) Macs (which make fonts look thicker than in Windows). They then assume it looks good everywhere(or plain just don't care about Windows/Linux users users and/or older folks).Also, I think this design trend was started or made popular by Apple.

Apple caused the trend of embossed text + gray backgrounds, but they never went low-contrast; in fact their home page still uses a quite dated top menu, and sharp black on white text. Colorful, pastel, monotone and low-contrast UIs are just a general trend along with "flat" design, I don't think it's roots can be pinpointed.

The web App Store descriptions and reviews appear to be low contrast to me. For example: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/wordament/id580935508?mt=8

Re: LayerVault Sends DMCA Takedown Letter re Flat-UI

#303

Post by integraton »

lucisferre wrote: post #236
electic wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure it does. They misused it and it is highly likely they will file another notice for another Flat UI design that in the future, for whatever reason they think, look similar to their design.

> it is highly likely they will file another notice for another Flat UI design that in the future Or, alternatively, they might realize what a mistake taking this approach was and never do it again. That's what I think is "highly likely" here.

> they might realize what a mistake taking this approach was and never do it again

It doesn't seem like he's learned anything, considering he's making jokes about it on twitter:

https://twitter.com/Allan/status/309415721941753857

https://twitter.com/Allan/status/309416516372275200

https://twitter.com/Allan/status/309351344769204224

Re: LayerVault Sends DMCA Takedown Letter re Flat-UI

#304

Post by meh02 »

dzlobin wrote: post #92
andyl wrote: post #63

I learned one thing: I will never use LayerVault's service, and discourage anyone I know from using it.

How about you look into the issue rather than making bold comments with no basis. https://twitter.com/Allan/status/309346292902014976 https://twitter.com/Allan/status/309350351054716929

I don't think you understand.

All design builds on other design. Maybe this guy was "inspired" by LayerVault, maybe not.

The problem is that a DMCA takedown is like using a sledgehammer when you could have just asked nicely first.

This is just bad PR for no reason.

Re: LayerVault Sends DMCA Takedown Letter re Flat-UI

#306

Post by kysol »

ender7 wrote: post #201

For the lazy, here's a summary of the claims that LV/DN is making: Some icons appear to be heavily inspired by LV. Here are three icons (circled) from Flat-UI: http://i.imgur.com/xDDULcG.png You can see that the gears and news icons do bear some similarity to LV's versions: http://dribbble.com/shots/800428-LayerVault-icon-set-for-del... and http://imgur.com/rli5IVU (the latter via http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=…

> This seems to be a massive PR blunder for the LV guys. They could have put up a blog post enumerating how many of their (and others') designs were ripped off (which is not the same thing as copyright infringement) and probably garnered some internet sympathy. Now, by misusing the much-hated DMCA takedown notice they've positioned themselves in the same camp with all the DMCA bullies we have grown to loathe.

Maybe I've had my head in the sand for far too long, but I had never heard of LayerVault until today, and I know them now for all the wrong reasons.

I find it somewhat silly that no matter what trend you follow, someone will always be there, waiting to pounce.

This isn't the mid 2000's, "First" posts were childish back then, and "First" claims are the same now.

...and seriously at the colour schemes. The flat colour trend is basically the same as a new art movement (it's only pastel colours made more vibrant). I predict that with the current trend being Real -> Flat, the next phase will be a new form of Pointillism.

If we really wanted to be picky, you could draw comparisons between the way that LV do human faces (see bottom of the Tour page) and the old Mac OS logo.

Re: LayerVault Sends DMCA Takedown Letter re Flat-UI

#307

Post by deelowe »

heliostatic wrote: post #191
swanson wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seriously? It's a clock - how many unique ways are there to design it? It's a folded up map with pins in it. He moved the hour/minutes hands, changed the colors and shadows, used different continents in the map.

Seriously? Apple paid $21 million for a clock design after first adopting your attitude: http://www.law.com/corporatecounsel/PubArticleCC.jsp?id=1202...

Did you read the article? They were sued over trademark infringement. Trademark has nothing to do with copyright or the DMCA.

Re: LayerVault Sends DMCA Takedown Letter re Flat-UI

#308

Post by deelowe »

jakelazaroff wrote: post #298
pifflesnort wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But it's the SUM of all of those things. This is not how copyright works.

I'm less concerned with the allegations of copyright trolling, etc (IANAL; I don't really know whether or not this qualifies for a DMCA takedown notice, although I suspect it does not) and more with the general opinion among commentators here that this was anything OTHER than a blatant ripoff of LayerVault's UI. To me it seems like more of a trademark/trade dress issue, which as far as I know doesn't fall under copyr…

Ripping off someone's design isn't grounds for a DMCA takedown notice unless you actually violate copyright(the legal definition, not some hand wavy "I did it first" definition). If LV had filed a trademark claim no one would be complaining b/c A) they would definitely lose(there's no issue of brand confusion here) and B) the guy would get to decide himself whether he wanted to risk leaving his stuff online (instead of github deciding for him).

Re: LayerVault Sends DMCA Takedown Letter re Flat-UI

#309

Post by stefanobernardi »

The reality is that DesignModo is not new to this.

I have been waiting for this to happen for a while. Their "Bricks UI" is an extremely blatant copy of Google Ventures' web site, and it's weird nothing happened there.

http://www.googleventures.com/ http://designmodo.com/the-bricks-addons/

I'm not on either side, but it's just painful to watch the reactions on HN. It seems like a lot of the commenters were just closed down somewhere waiting for the right occasion to blame some copyright enforcer.

Re: LayerVault Sends DMCA Takedown Letter re Flat-UI

#310

Post by interpol_p »

jre wrote: post #202
heliostatic wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seriously? Apple paid $21 million for a clock design after first adopting your attitude: http://www.law.com/corporatecounsel/PubArticleCC.jsp?id=1202...

Apple's clock was an exact copy of the swiss railway clock. In this case, the rounded corners are different, the color is different, the shadow is different, the lengths of the lines are different.

Apple's wasn't an exact copy either. (The Swiss railway clock design was nicer.)

There were slight differences in hand lengths, removal of the logo (obviously), and stroke widths.

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