Could I get in legal trouble for copying a website's stylesheet? [closed] Could I get in legal trouble for copying a website's stylesheet? [closed] wordpress wordpress

Could I get in legal trouble for copying a website's stylesheet? [closed]


Could Microsoft take legal action against me if I used a stylesheet from their page?

Absolutely, since you infringed their copyright. On the other hand, it's debatable whether the stylesheet alone constitues a sufficient threshold of originality to justify legal actions1. At the least, taking without asking is often considered rude. ;-)


1) No. It certainly doesn't. A sophisticated design however will.


Yes, you can get in legal trouble for copying a site's stylesheet since it's typically a copyright violation. Worse, you could get publicly bashed on blogs like youthoughtwewouldntnotice.com, making such blog posts about you high-ranked Google results for your name, thus tarnishing your reputation irreversibly.

Don't do it, it's not worth the risks.


You could. You probably wont.

Most importantly: Why bother? CSS is pretty simple, it's essentially positioning a bunch of boxes around, and colouring them..

Just look at their CSS files and layout, and reimplement it yourself.. It'll probably end up easier than reworking their CSS to work with your site (unless you completely copy their site, including the CSS, HTML and layout images), plus you'll learn a lot about CSS while you do it.