Mal contacted me with a question about the legality of the Smells Like Facebook WordPress theme that I’m currently using.  It’s an interesting question so I thought I’d post it here in the blog.

Just had a read of your e-book and am most impressed. I found you through your contributions on wordpress.org re: the Smells Like Facebook theme.

I don’t know who to ask about this so am turning to you but how legal is the theme? By that, I mean, is it an infringement of copyright in terms of design, look and feel? I understand that the theme would use none of the Facebook intellectual property that is its source code but could it be argued in a court of law that it is a blatant ripoff and infringes copyright?

Also, the question is whether Facebook would bother hunting down all those who have downloaded it over 20,000 times now?

Would appreciate your thoughts.

Hmm.. Yes Mal, very interesting question.  I’ll be the first to admit that everything I know about the law I have learned by watching re-runs of South Park, but I think you might be on to something.  I suppose that if Facebook were to be inclined to do so, they probably could send their team of highly paid lawyers after the theme author or WordPress.org and request/force them to stop distributing the theme.  Facebook would probably also have legal grounds to track down all users of the theme and send cease and desist letters to every blogger using it.

But the question is, WOULD Facebook do this?  Just imagine all of the negative press that thousand of bloggers could stirr up if Facebook forced them all to stop using the theme – and it’s not like Facebook is losing money by bloggers using the theme.  So I guess my answer is, technically speaking it’s probably not 100% legal, but my guess is that Facebook does not care.  I’ll keep using the theme until either i get a cease & desist notice or I get bored with it.