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Licensing for Theme, want to sell my site

by prosell
14 replies
  • WEB DESIGN
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I bought this theme but I'm a little confused because I bought it to create a site and sell it but now the owner of the theme says it's an open source code and I can't sell the theme without giving the person my license. Does anyone know how I can make this work for me and what is an open source code. I don't want to give my license to the buyer and have to rebuy the theme b/c it's kind of expensive. Any ideas.


#licensing #sell #site #theme
  • Profile picture of the author iAmNameLess
    Originally Posted by prosell View Post

    I bought this theme but I'm a little confused because I bought it to create a site and sell it but now the owner of the theme says it's an open source code and I can't sell the theme without giving the person my license. Does anyone know how I can make this work for me and what is an open source code. I don't want to give my license to the buyer and have to rebuy the theme b/c it's kind of expensive. Any ideas.
    Well to be honest, you are one of very few people that actually pay for themes. What he said, gives you all the information you need. It is open source, so he can't technically do anything about it. Change up the graphics maybe, but legally, if he sued you, it would not hold up.
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    • Profile picture of the author prosell
      There are themes out there for free? Can you tell me why it wouldn't hold up.

      This what his site says:

      All themes provided and sold on this website are copyright to "Premium Press Limited", by using any any of our products you agree to the terms and conditions below;
      1. Wordpress Themes

      Our themes are licensed under the GNU general public license, our themes may be used by our customers on as many websites as they like.

      a) Making Changes to our Themes Upon purchase, you are authorized to make any necessary modifications to my products to fit your purposes.

      b) Javascript Most of our themes use JavaScript libraries, which usually have their own license, and do not inherit the GPL license.


      2. Payment and Delivery

      All our payments are processed by Avangate. After your payment has successfully been received and processed, you will received an email with download instructions. If you do not receive an email after 1 hour please contact us with your order ID and we will investigate this for you.

      3. Ownership

      You may not claim intellectual or exclusive ownership to any products offered by "Premium Press Limited", modified or unmodified. All products are property of "Premium Press Limited". Our products are provided "as is" without warranty of any kind, either expressed or implied. In no event shall our juridical person be liable for any damages including, but not limited to, direct, indirect, special, incidental or consequential damages or other losses arising out of the use of or inability to use our products.

      4. Theme Support & License Keys

      We provide support and license keys for paid customers only. You must provide evidence in the form of a order ID when contacting us for support requests. We do not provide support for customizations or theme changes, we only provide support for technical issues with our themes.
      If you are found to be distributing license keys or providing access to our themes without the website owner first purchasing our themes then you're support access and all existing keys will be stopped.

      5. Theme Updates

      All themes are consistently updated and designed to be compatible with the latest stable version of WordPress (currently 3.0) downloaded from WordPress.org, but we give no guarantee that older versions of my themes will run with future versions of WordPress.
      Theme updates are provided free to all paid customers via our customer area.

      6. Refund Policy

      All sales are final. No refunds will be given for software that is delivered via digital download from our site. If there is a problem with one of the digital download products or if you experience any difficulty with its download, we will fix the problem.

      7. Warranty

      "Premium Press Limited" does not warranty or guarantee themes in any manner. We cannot guarantee they will function with all 3rd party components, plugins or web browsers. Browser compatibility should be tested against the demonstration templates on the demo server. Please ensure that the browsers you use will work with the templates as we can not guarantee that our themes will work with all browser combinations.

      (Our company reserves the right to change or modify current Terms and Conditions with no prior notice.)
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    • Profile picture of the author Headfirst
      Originally Posted by iAmNameLess View Post

      Well to be honest, you are one of very few people that actually pay for themes.
      What are you talking about?
      I spend a few hundred a month on themes for clients.

      Are you implying that everyone bootlegs themes or that there isn't a market for themes?
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  • Profile picture of the author brandonacox
    If you sell a site, you transfer the rights to the design with it, but if you bought the theme, you can certainly use the theme again on another site - it's GNU.

    What you usually can't do is resell the theme yourself or offer it as part of a package, and that's only because of the Javascript licensing.
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  • Profile picture of the author iAmNameLess
    You can definitely resell the theme if you change the images!!! Either way though, in court, they wouldn't be able to sue you over this. The reason is, they don't have rights over the code! They can sue over images or graphics, but not code. They don't own the wordpress platform, they don't own the code... they just customized the wordpress platform, that is it. You're good, don't worry about it!
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    • Profile picture of the author prosell
      Actually I don't want to resell the theme. I just want to make websites with the theme but the rep was trying to tell me I need to buy a license everytime I sell a website with the theme on it. That doesn't make any sense to me
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  • Profile picture of the author iAmNameLess
    You are correct, you don't need to buy a theme for every site you want to use it on!
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    • Profile picture of the author Headfirst
      Originally Posted by iAmNameLess View Post

      You are correct, you don't need to buy a theme for every site you want to use it on!
      You cannot make a blanket statement like that. It all depends on the license. If you use themeforest themes, they are only licensed for one use. If you want unlimited use you need to purchase an extended license (usually around 10x the single license cost)

      It all depends on the license that comes with the theme when you purchase it.

      It's just like a CD or a professional photograph. You own the media, but not the rights to make copies of the media.
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      • Profile picture of the author iAmNameLess
        Originally Posted by Headfirst View Post

        You cannot make a blanket statement like that. It all depends on the license. If you use themeforest themes, they are only licensed for one use. If you want unlimited use you need to purchase an extended license (usually around 10x the single license cost)

        It all depends on the license that comes with the theme when you purchase it.

        It's just like a CD or a professional photograph. You own the media, but not the rights to make copies of the media.
        You couldn't be further off from the truth. Obviously you have no idea how the legal system works. Themeforest does that to scare you, they can not legally claim rights for their "themes" based on a platform.

        A CD and professional photograph is nothing close to this. That is intellectual property and can PHYSICALLY be copyrighted. I own my own publishing company through ASCAP, and even then it is hard to prove rights if certain things are changed.

        When it comes to open source, code. You can not sue someone, or prevent someone from using your theme. You can charge for it, but the GPL license clearly states that you can not do anything to make it non-free. The only ones that can do anything legally, are the CMS's or anyone that develops a platform. Not people that create themes for a platform.

        You can argue with me all you want, but I know the facts. I ran my own template company and sold it, SIX YEARS AGO. I had people jacking themes all the time and there wasn't a thing I could do about it.
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        • Profile picture of the author Headfirst
          Originally Posted by iAmNameLess View Post

          You couldn't be further off from the truth. Obviously you have no idea how the legal system works. Themeforest does that to scare you, they can not legally claim rights for their "themes" based on a platform.
          This is one of the reasons IM'ers have such a bad name. Unless specified in the license themes do have a copyright. The theme doesn't include the open source code. It's what makes it work. You cannot sell or copyright the underlying wordpress software, but the theme you display is 100% copyright.

          If you duplicate commercial themes without a license to do so, you are a thief, plain and simple.

          Unless specified otherwise in the license that design is for ONE site. If you want to use it on a second site you must buy another license.

          This isn't fear mongering, this is copyright law.

          Copyright law BTW happens to be the most misunderstood part of US law. So it's not your fault you're not familiar with it.

          Ask a lawyer or an insurance agent that specializes in E&O policies, either one will set you straight.
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          • Profile picture of the author Headfirst
            This is from the Software Freedom Law Center:
            In conclusion, the WordPress themes supplied contain elements that are derivative of WordPress's copyrighted code. These themes, being collections of distinct works (images, CSS files, PHP files), need not be GPL-licensed as a whole. Rather, the PHP files are subject to the requirements of the GPL while the images and CSS are not. Third-party developers of such themes may apply restrictive copyrights to these elements if they wish.
            Bold and underline are mine.

            Please don't steal from theme developers. They are small business owners just like we are and depend on theme buyers to act ethically and with integrity in order to make their living.
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  • Profile picture of the author iAmNameLess
    You can only be in trouble for using their pictures, that is all. How about this, you create a theme, I use it, and you attempt to sue me. If it doesn't get thrown out before there is ever a trial, I will pay you $10,000. LOL.

    You can claim copyright all you want but that isn't how copyright law works. Quote a custom made license agreement from any company, it still does no good at all.

    It is interesting because I have a lawyer that is part of my company, he is on my board of directors, my family is in law, and that includes a senator as well.

    You sir, are mistaken. If you buy a theme from someone, use it, and use it as much as you want. If you want to use it on multiple sites, switch out the graphics, the code is not something that is subject to copyright.

    I owned a pretty major company and we sold about 800-1,100 templates a week. We could have sold 4X the amount if we were able to enforce licensing and copyright per site. In fact, you can't even copyright it, at all. That is a fact, and since you know all about copyright law show me cases that have been filed where someone used a template for more than one site. Just show me.

    About your little useless quote, yes you're right, images can be subject to copyright. I have said this many times now. The css, actually is not subject to copyright, the only CSS that can be used in a copyright fight is sprites... hmmm what are sprites for? Images.

    Get your facts straight, and maybe YOU should call an attorney to set you straight. At least do some searches of cases that WEREN'T thrown out. lol.

    If I buy a theme, and I change the images, make basic changes, take out any php notations from the company, then I can duplicate MY current theme that theirs was used for as a foundation, and do whatever I want.

    If in the music industry you have to change 1 note out of every bar to legally remix, and change a 2 words out of every 8-10 to use the lyrics, then why on earth do you think you can't edit out images and make modifications for it to be legal?

    Is it ethical? That is a different argument. Is it legal? Hell yes it is.
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    • Profile picture of the author Headfirst
      Originally Posted by iAmNameLess View Post

      You sir, are mistaken. If you buy a theme from someone, use it, and use it as much as you want. If you want to use it on multiple sites, switch out the graphics, the code is not something that is subject to copyright.
      I think what we have here is a language barrier problem. I don't think you know what a theme is. What you're describing above is removing the theme from a site and replacing it with one of your own creation.

      In fact, you can't even copyright it, at all.
      You sir have absolutely no idea what you are talking about. I'm not going to discuss this issue further than this post, because you just don't get it and I try to avoid feeding trolls.

      You can read up on copyright issues at Copyright.gov
      Wordpress themes are covered under the Copyright Registration for Online Works section (I think its circular 6 if you want to order a copy in print)

      That is a fact, and since you know all about copyright law show me cases that have been filed where someone used a template for more than one site. Just show me.
      There are thousands of DMCA takedown notices filed everyday against those that steal themes. Just google it.

      Almost all of these copyright violations are handled through the provisions of the DMCA. There is no motivation to sue theme thieves because most of them are flat broke anyway.

      About your little useless quote, yes you're right, images can be subject to copyright. I have said this many times now. The css, actually is not subject to copyright, the only CSS that can be used in a copyright fight is sprites... hmmm what are sprites for? Images.
      CSS is fully protected by copyright. The individual styles inside the CSS are not, but the CSS in its entirety is.

      As I said before, I'm done debating this with you, see you in another thread.
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      • Profile picture of the author iAmNameLess
        My responses are in bold.

        I think what we have here is a language barrier problem. I don't think you know what a theme is. What you're describing above is removing the theme from a site and replacing it with one of your own creation. You can buy a theme, replace images, therefore it is no longer a theme.

        You sir have absolutely no idea what you are talking about. I'm not going to discuss this issue further than this post, because you just don't get it and I try to avoid feeding trolls. Okay, you just don't have anything to back up your claims.

        You can read up on copyright issues at Copyright.gov
        Wordpress themes are covered under the Copyright Registration for Online Works section (I think its circular 6 if you want to order a copy in print) Yes, wordpress is covered under copyright registration, themes are not. Can Wordpress sue anyone that builds a new CMS with 75% of the same code? No.

        There are thousands of DMCA takedown notices filed everyday against those that steal themes. Just google it. I did, where are they? Link me. Link me to anything that shows that the case has not been thrown out?

        Almost all of these copyright violations are handled through the provisions of the DMCA. There is no motivation to sue theme thieves because most of them are flat broke anyway. Okay, true, but if there was a suit a judge can mandate the site be taken down.

        CSS is fully protected by copyright. The individual styles inside the CSS are not, but the CSS in its entirety is. Yes, CSS is under copyright, which is exactly why you can't copyright a theme that uses CSS.

        As I said before, I'm done debating this with you, see you in another thread. It's been fun!
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