Talking from the developer's point of view.

You were awarded the job to develop a site based on a design that you have nothing to do with. All you're doing is turning that design into a website.

You find that the design has been substantially "borrowed" (80+% in common). What would you do as the developer?

NOTE: The client designed the site and know full well of the borrowed factors.

there is nothing to do, there is leagally nothing wrong with that. even if it looked 99.9% the same as long as it was made and not stolen there is no way that person could get in trouble. i could screen shot your site and copy it completely and as long as i made it, its not stealing it.

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GFXaid :: Graphic Design Community

anywas coying a site is not difficult but having your own unique design is. that i guess differentiates a good and bad designer.

You can handball the job over to me and I will do it

Seriously maybe suggest that you will only do it if you can change some of the elements so it does not look similar after you have highlighted the issue(s).

they say, ideas are meant to be shared. but there exists a law on "intellectual property rights"... I don't know if it applies on your countries though :P

if client has nothing to say then why not... u r asked to carry out a job, so you should do it.. unless u r borrowing from a TM design there wont be any issue...

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b2b

If an artist made a painting and you made one by copying his and it looked quite similar, you still made the painting because you still have the skill to copy it. Be careful with this no the less though, because you can get into some trouble with copyright problems, such as if you copied a trademark logo or something and didnt give credit for that. Its a little rough around the edges but for the most part it shouldnt be too much of a problem.

some tip though: if you stumbled into a very nice and very popular template, don't use it. chances are, people will notice :P

Yes your deffenatly not going to want to make a copy of myspace's design and hope to get away without major flaming :P

Sure thing, getting templates for CMS is legal.