| I'm on the fence on this one - I could argue either way (I could probably work a books worth of material). However, I think it is interesting to note that the idea of "stealing" a design has been done for years. I just don't think many people do it to websites. Examples - there are companies that bundle premade controls that look pretty darn close to the designs in paid software. Here is an example of one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uYzjJHtldec They may just wrap Windows API - but I've seen ribbon interfaces running on Windows 2K with VB6. Even if one would argue that falls into "fair use" - consider two more examples: Zelda Classic[1] - they used original artwork from the original Nintendo game and re-created the game on the PC Mari0[2] - the original Mario but with portals (including level design and graphics) Now from what I can tell - Nintendo doesn't shutdown/care about these people because they aren't making money off the games. But if these games aren't infringing on Nintendo's copyright - I don't know what would be. [1] - http://armageddongames.net/showthread.php?96754-Zelda-Classi...
[2] - http://stabyourself.net/mari0/ |
Generally copying/cloning a design is legally OK, but copying the implementation/execution of that design is not OK. This is well demonstrated in the font industry. You can copy a typeface as long as you do it "cleanly" (ie by not reverse engineering the font files), which is why there are lots of cheap copies of common fonts. This is probably the most relevant aspect for this project. They can copy the look'n'feel of Trello as perfectly as they can, but they can not copy Trello assets, CSS etc.
Then there is the Ribbon. Being software Microsoft has it patented which makes clones of Ribbon more in the gray area. On the other hand the enforceability of such patents is somewhat questionable.
Lastly the games. In addition to copyright infringement I suspect there is also risk of trademark infringement. What makes trademarks interesting that they are thought to need enforcing to remain valid, so companies generally are less willing to a blind eye to tm infringements. Also unlike copyright which considers where the work comes from, trademarks generally consider only what the work looks like and if it can be confused to the original trademark.