Design firm accuses Mozilla of UI plagiarism

“A Canadian interface design firm accused Mozilla of stealing
user interface (UI) elements for a development tool in the browser
maker’s Jetpack project, which aims to simplify add-on making.

“MetaLab of Victoria, British Columbia, leveled the charges
Tuesday when the 11-person firm’s founder, Andrew Wilkinson,
blogged about the similarities between his company’s designs and
those posted by Mozilla for FlightDeck, a Jetpack editor.

“”What they did was pretty ridiculous,” Wilkinson said in an
interview today, arguing that there is a distinction between being
inspired by another designer’s work, and copying it outright.
“There’s a difference between inspiration versus ripping something
off,” he said. “The measurements of the graphic elements [Mozilla
took from us] were the exact same, the very same pixels. When
someone takes your images from the server hosting them, that’s
crossing the line.”

Complete Story