I can't help but think this sort of thing is going to happen more and more as we move towards a flat/minimalist UI. I've read comments (not on HN) from people

I can't help but think this sort of thing is going to happen more and more as we move towards a flat/minimalist UI. I've read comments (not on HN) from people who have endorsed the DMCA takedown because of their personal ethics and morals rather than knowledge of the law. Particularly one who claimed that the similar colour palettes between LV and Flat UI justified the takedown - even though colour palettes themselves are currently not copyrightable subject matter. To win on those grounds you'd need a genius (and crazy) lawyer and a judge who is either asleep at the wheel or bribed. Then you'd lose on appeal anyway. Colours can be only trademarked. Using that colour is not a copyright violation. Hence no DMCA. It makes me sad that as we all move towards minimalist design startup founders will need to know IP law better than a few years ago. Some of this is due to trolling and some because of a mislead or otherwise naive understanding of the law like I mentioned above. It's just adding pressure on founders that we don't really need and more work for lawyers. A lot of us are doing whatever we're doing for the first time and that makes us (potentially) easy targets. A better knowledge of the law in this scenario might have prevented everything from blowing up like it has. But Flat UI and Layervault wouldn't have had as much energy put into the product and so everyone suffers. Then again I'm in law school right now so at least I know there's a job in all of this if i ever need it :-/ I guess I just wish we could stop bickering about stuff like this and get on with building cool stuff.