Can they sue u for using their theme?

Whats up guys! I have a lil questions for you guyz.

In the download section i saw a lot of premium themes and my questions is...

can you designers of the themes discover you have downloaded the theme and not buy them? if so, can you take legal actions against u?

thanks!

As soon as a developer publishes his content is is protected by copyright. This means (in general) that if you literally copy line by line then you are infringing on that copyright. Sometimes creating derivative work can also be pulled in on the copyright net.

It is difficult for a content producer to defend his copyrighted work. In real world terms it takes a lot of money to actually initiate a lawsuit and see it through. In Federal court we are talking hundreds of thousands over several years. Only 2% of lawsuits see it through to a judgement. Far easier to write scary letters!

If you aren't in the US you are probably free and clear from the threat of a lawsuit from a designer who makes $40k/yr. If you want to be on the right side of the law it is probably best to grab some ideas here and there from the themes and do your own thing.

dfusion said:

Whats up guys! I have a lil questions for you guyz.

In the download section i saw a lot of premium themes and my questions is...

can you designers of the themes discover you have downloaded the theme and not buy them? if so, can you take legal actions against u?

thanks!

Click to expand...

it's just common sense...what do u think of torrents & etc...just cover your traces and most importantly your ass

remove those "powered by" and links back to original creator....change theme styling a lil bit.

If you were to link to who originally owns it, than maybe I could understand, but, if you use something without asking permission or pointing towards the person who made the theme, than you can get in trouble.

All themes (wordpress) that use WP functions are under GPL license, which means its free software ("Free software" is a matter of liberty, not price. To understand the concept, you should think of "free" as in "free speech," not as in "free beer.") Free software is a matter of the users' freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve the software.


Wordpress faq puts a good description on its license:

WordPress themes supplied contain elements that are derivative of WordPress's copyrighted code. These themes, being collections of distinct works (images, CSS files, PHP files), need not be GPL-licensed as a whole. Rather, the PHP files are subject to the requirements of the GPL while the images and CSS are not.

Click to expand...

This is pushed very hard by Wordpress founding developer Matt Mullenweg. Even Thesis (after a long debate between Matt and Chris) is GPL, but its images and css is protected under their copyright. So technically, the theme code is free to use, sell, share, or edit, as long as your give the license and source.

The thing is alot of people who develop themes and plugins do not recognize this and will try to sue.

Most themes have their images and css files with the package, so using these things are in violation of copyright if you treat it as GPL, so as long as you dont use their images and css, technically its all legal.

If you're making money from it pay for it. It's good Karma.
I use borrowed themes and templates to present to clients
all the time if they buy I buy the rights.
I also have a few IM/CPA sites that I use as "portfolio" they
make me beer tokens so I paid for them once they started making
money.

GPL for wordpress themes debated on Hacker News under title "Why the GPL does not apply to premium WordPress themes"

Still ...karma...