[ghshephard]

You can't look at the two pages, side-by side and say that curebits was "inspired" - it's blatant copying, and poorly done. Look at all the elements that were basically cut & pasted:

  o FREE "On all Accounts" up top.
  o Thicker border on center rectangle
  o Offset rectangle in center
  o Black /  Same shade of blue for the Name, description of price. 

Interesting to note, there was a (successful in my book) attempt at original design by using Red/Orange instead of Black for the price.

  o "Choose Plan" - Same name, positioning - and bit-for bit identical.  
  o "Cancel Anytime" Immediately above three options
  o Statement of "Confidence"  (Trusted vs Safe Secure)
  o Quoted endorsement below the statement of confidence.

It's not illegal, or even particularly immoral - what it is is shady, and unprofessional behavior by anybody who wanted to be able to work as a well-regarded designer. Whoever did that work didn't have a lot of self respect as a designer - and, based on the professional designers that I know - probably didn't consider themselves to be first and foremost a designer. Probably an engineer who had to slap some UI elements onto their website. If all you are trying to do is bottom-feed and make $$$, (Think about how Zynga, or Samsung build many of their products) - then this is actually a pretty good approach - just copy what has worked for others.

Real world story - when Netscape finally gave up the ghost as a software company and Mike Homer came up on top, and convinced Jim Barkdsale that our future was as a "Portal" - Jim Barksdale, our Beloved and incredibly well regarded CEO, came out at an all hands, spelled it out to the company, and said "The competition is now the portals - and that's something that we can go out and copy." - he used that word, "copy".

Within a week, we had _entire walls_ covered with plotted printouts (remember those?) of Yahoo's Portal, and, underneath those plotted printouts - element by element replicas depicting Netscape.com. You could almost overlay them.

It was successful. Netscape sold for $4 Billion to AOL ($10 Billion on the last day of trading) - but I can guarantee you that none of those designers were particularly proud of the work they where doing, and hopefully didn't put it in their portfolio.

[tlianza]

> It's not illegal, or even particularly immoral

Are you sure it's not illegal? From the bottom of the copied page:

"All text and design is copyright ©1999-2012 37signals, LLC. All rights reserved."

[ceejayoz]

Adding a copyright statement to a page doesn't change copyright laws. A court would have to side with you, something that's by no means guaranteed.

[tlianza]

Right, they'd have to go to court and be found guilty of copying this copy-written work... I guess you're right that it's not guaranteed, but it's hard to imagine this wouldn't be a slam dunk.