Looks like the pitchforks are out over on HN.

It was pretty straightforward. Our reaction was "Cool, a flat UI theme" to "Wait, this looks familiar" to "Wait, are those our illustrations?".

I contacted the designmodo people over email, because that's the right way to handle this. The owner was being stubborn at first and refused to admit wrongdoing. At that point, I submitted the DMCA request. Eventually, he removed the most blatant icons which (in my eyes) is an admission of guilt.

They even managed to kinda lift the old DN icon :) http://imgur.com/3zoKuvH

If you have some intimiate knowledge of LayerVault's UI (which their designer apparently does), the similarities are a bit more than striking. That's not a huge issue until you release everything together - the icons, the colors, the UI elements, whatever.

We give a lot of our stuff away for free. We put a lot of our projects on cosmos.layervault.com, we write about interesting concepts we've come up with and include the code on our blog, whatever. This isn't about thinking we own "Flat Design" or being mad that there's some other design out there with a similar aesthetic.

Guys, this is honestly pretty disappointing. The illustrations you allege "infringe" are, as many others have pointed out, extremely similar to prior work on The Noun Project. In fact, I recently used a "flat" newspaper image on a recent project that you'd probably call me out for "stealing" from you... which would be true, were it not for the fact I designed that asset almost two years ago. That basic newspaper graphic has existed for at least three years. It's almost generic at this stage.

The sad thing to me is that it seems as though you mistakenly believe you've created your visual style out of thin air, and are unable to recognise or admit you used other artists' work as inspiration.

Even worse, in fact, is that you made the conscious decision to promote your company's visual aesthetic as part of a "design movement". You essentially encouraged others to copy your "look". If you made it clear from the beginning that you felt ownership over your visual aesthetic, nobody would have considered it ethical to release a "LayerVault UI kit". However, you continually referred to your style as "flat design" and repeatedly suggested you wanted other designers to follow.

I find your actions pretty difficult to follow. Yes, some of their assets are similar, but how can you not recognise why issuing this DCMA leaves an extremely bad taste?

While it's clear that they ripped you guys off, I don't think it warranted a DMCA. Color scheme and style are not covered by law, and thank god they aren't, otherwise we would all get sued by Coca Cola for using the color red.

A blog post showcasing how and where they were ripping you off would have been much more effective in putting the community on your side.

I'm not taking teams here. I sympathize with both designmodo (I write for them occasionally) and with Layervault since I met Kelly last year when he launched LV on FOWA.

My opinion is that designmodo is trying to use the momentum of the Flat UI trend and get some revenue out of sells with these kits, and it makes complete sense business wise, they look like they have their business figured out and are probably making some good money with it, because people like Flat (even if all we see is flat mockery lately), but most people want to use/design/be/buy/show Flat. If they inspired in Layervault? I believe so, I guess that given the impact that LV had in the Flat trend, everyone does. But I don't honestly believe that they blatantly and purposely ripped off any of Layervault's designs or illustrations.

And Layervault has all the right to defend their image. Allan had a HUGE part in the Flat UI/design trend/movement/style whatever you want to call it. And this whole Flat discussion also gave a lot of attention to LV, and that's great for a company to designers be talked about its design. And it's totally understandable that if a couple of icons there are really similar or even inspired a bit too much, they have to go. But I don't think that a DMCA is the way to go. And it's really easy to create a Flat design that looks like another one, the style in itself makes it hard to differentiate with details, given that are almost none. http://dribbble.com/search?page=1&q=flat+design

Now that I think of it, everytime I said "designmodo" back there, it should've been replaced by the designer's name, not the blog. If there's something to be discussed style-wise, it should be with the designer. But I don't really know who designed the whole kit, @monstercritic probably?

So I'm not on team jacob and I'm not on team edward, I get both and I just hope that this doesn't affect either business by damaging their image in any way.

Content (I think mainly illustrations) within that UI kit were owned by LayerVault. They put it back up and removed the bits acting like nothing was ever wrong and LayerVault did it because they 'think they own the flat style'. Thats what it looks like anyway. Good Artists Borrow, Great Artists Steal?

Yes, that would be great because as for now all we've seen was kicking people from chat rooms and deleting posts on DN and it's a terrible way to communicate on this kind of problem.

I'm on Team LayerVault here. Let's be honest, there's huge resemblance to LV's style - and I think the only reason a lot of designers are taking Designmodo's side is because they had the DMCA put on them, and so were made to look like the victims.

LayerVault, I can understand why you would want others to not use icons similar to yours, but DMCA is absolutely not the way to go about it. Accept that your own design did not emerge from vacuum - comparisons to your, designmodo and noun project icons sometimes show greater similarity between you and noun project than from you and designmodo. Something so simple as flat icon style is bound to look similar.

Same goes with colors and overall visual style. It's clear that designmodo made something that overall looks similar to LayerVault, but they also provided many sources to designs that show very similar style and colors that predate LayerVault.

Once again, I am very disappointed with your overall attitude to this. So much, that you lost me as a customer, and even as Designer News member.

If you "do" look at the comparison of the icons before / after here: http://cl.ly/image/3K3H2O0X453G you will see the icons in question have been switched since the DMCA. The sad truth is that a "few" icons were lumped into some other pretty creative design and I do think that LV is in the right by issuing the DMCA. If any part of the kit is borrowed and not changed and then offered for sale, the whole kit gets lumped in with those few icons and thus must be taken down.

You can see the icons have been replaced by other "great" icons since. If the kit was shipped this way in the first place, DM would be in a much better place right now. A few icons were ripped and offered up for sale, not cool. They also then used LV as their soap box for releasing the kit. That is just a slap in the face.

I have to agree with LayerVault on this one. When I saw the kit, I immediately thought of them. I thought it was them who had created it. It's their right to protect their intelectual property.

Am I crazy or has Google been working with a similar flat aesthetic that predates LV and DM ? I mean I know some call it "almost flat," but the same could be said for the LV ui. I do agree that theirs some fault with the iconography, but I feel like this style isn't particularly owned by LV, its just the en vogue aesthetic. What's my point? I have no idea.

wow, that escalated quickly

http://i2.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/366/396/f8a.gif

http://blog.keenancummings.com/post/44715900168/stop-stealing-my-style-bro#

"Creativity is knowing how to hide your sources" - Albert Einstein

I think this went too far, and too bitter. It reminds me of the Christian Louboutin case where he actually managed to trademark the color "Red" for his red soles. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/05/christian-louboutin-ysl-red-soles_n_1857992.html

You can DMCA for anything you want, but it doesn't mean you have a claim – and to be quite honest, the layout is not unique. The internet is not an island – and there will be better/worse versions of your design at the end of the day.

I'll finish this with a quote,

"Imitation is the best form of flattery"

I would like to also point out that there is resemblance of this icon in other places too.

See SymbolSet's paper icon: http://share.manikrathee.com/image/1C042u0V2t3w

Found the LayerVault icon they lifted that was removed

http://dribbble.com/shots/908434-Icons

It's definitely inspired by LV and I would agree they did something wrong be copying so many elements. But I also agree with Keenan's article about the ownership of style. No one will ever own flat design, but using the exact same style of elements, colors, proportions, icons and even some blatantly ripped illustrations is taking it too far.

Allan: I was actually planning on using this Flat UI platform for a school website. Would it be inadvisable to do so now that this situation has come up?

Can't wait to hear this one… I haven't seen anything so absurdly and stupidly hilarious since Troll 2.