Rules and policies to protect author work within the marketplaces

I wanted to put 2 questions to Envato and the community for open discussion. This issue is appearing more and more lately on Envato marketplaces as the competition increases.

1. What are Envato doing to protect author’s work when A blatant rip-off of a 1 template or a significant part of a template slips through the review stage and is uploaded to Themeforest ?
2. Is it acceptable to Envato and to authors, that one author can buy an existing item and reproduce this item by mindlessly rewriting the functions while leaving parts of the original code clearly visible ?

In either of this situations, will Enavto take action once notified, or is it up to the original author to send DCMA notices, and if so how would a DCMA apply in the case of a design only rip-off ?


Please note: This is a general discussion and is not directed at any particular author or item, so please avoid any mention of items or authors otherwise this thread will be locked before it goes anywhere.

For me, make it simple, contact Envato support, http://themeforest.net/support

Tell support that item “X” is a rip-off version from one of my item “Y” and give the details of your investigation result… If you can prove it, then Envato will and has to remove that item…

That’s all…

PrimaThemes said
For me, make it simple, contact Envato support, http://themeforest.net/support

Tell support that item “X” is a rip-off version from one of my item “Y” and give the details of your investigation result… If you can prove it, then Envato will and has to remove that item…

That’s all…

Well that may be how it was in the past, but in my recent experience of this issue, despite very obvious simularities, support requested that I send a DCMA notice.

bitfade said
Well that may be how it was in the past, but in my recent experience of this issue, despite very obvious simularities, support requested that I send a DCMA notice.

Sorry, do you mean that you need to send DCMA notice to that “bad” author first before envato take a necessary action? wow…

bitfade said

1. Is it acceptable to Envato and to authors, that one author can buy an existing item and reproduce this item by mindlessly rewriting the functions while leaving parts of the original code clearly visible ?

As far as i know, this is not allowed at all and if you can proove the source code is written by you, or at least it has been uploaded first, Envato should take action AND keep an eye on authors like this and their future uploads.

I personally would also try to contact the author directly and tell him about the possible problems he could face. A bigger problem is, if these items get uploaded to another stock site i guess.

Nothing is safe nowadays … unfortunately !

PrimaThemes said
Sorry, do you mean that you need to send DCMA notice to that “bad” author first before envato take a necessary action? wow…

yes, i was asked to
it’s my guess other authors would be interested to if this is a new policy and also what kind of help we can expect from them, which is the reason why i opened this thread

SonicCube said
As far as i know, this is not allowed at all and if you can proove the source code is written by you, or at least it has been uploaded first, Envato should take action AND keep an eye on authors like this and their future uploads.

well it would be nice to hear from Enavto on whether this is an acceptable practice or not

Yes could be tricky, especially when the code has come from a tutorial or demo. It would have to be handled case-by-case, but the existing “Do not copy anything” rules should be enough.

I think Envato is doing their best, there is no automated way Envato can check for similar code or designs (it would produce way too many false positives) and it is impossible to reviewers to memorise every single theme on the marketplace.

So it’s up to the community to report any clear rip offs that do make it through the review process (think of all the ones we don’t see as well).

If you believe there is an issue with a theme, report it to support, they will investigate (may take a week or so if they are busy) and get back to you with an answer. If you are 110% sure it is a clear rip off of your item, hit the “CONTACT ENVATO SUPPORT ” button under the item tags, and send a DMCA notice.

Keep positive !

dtbaker said
Yes could be tricky, especially when the code has come from a tutorial or demo. It would have to be handled case-by-case. eg: if an entire javascript file was copied between themes, and the 2nd theme didn’t even use some of those functions, then it would be a clear rip off. However if a single function was copied / adapted from an existing theme, it could be quite difficult to build a case.

I think Envato is doing their best, there is no automated way Envato can check for similar code or designs (it would produce way too many false positives) and it is impossible to reviewers to memorise every single theme on the marketplace.

It’s obviously not a reviewer issue, nobody would ever say that

Real question is: if you code a light effect and i build mine upon yours (so it looks exactly the same) by taking advantage of your whole “creative” effort to solve all development problems by just recoding your functions, is this fair enough to allow such an item to be uploaded here ?

i mean, even if you could still spot unchanged part of your code in mine ?

bitfade said
Real question is: if you code a light effect and i build mine upon yours (so it looks exactly the same) by taking advantage of your whole “creative” effort to solve all development problems by just recoding your functions, is this fair enough to allow such an item to be uploaded here ?

i mean, even if you could still spot unchanged part of your code in mine ?

if you are talking about php code in a wordpress theme, please remember that the license of PHP code in a wordpress theme is GPL … So, as long as they give proper credit for your code in the theme files, then we can’t do anything. It will be different if they copy most of your php codes and don’t give proper credit, they are “bad”! And Envato will take action when you report it.

PrimaThemes said
if you are talking about php code in a wordpress theme, please remember that the license of PHP code in a wordpress theme is GPL … So, as long as they give proper credit for your code in the theme files, then we can’t do anything

i’m not talking about php code, however it would be interesting to know if anybody is allowed to use any other top author wordpress framework to build themes to be sold on TF.