Well, I got better advice here, from Mentha, than I got from Ebay's Live Chat, lol. Thank you, Mentha! Luna, the Zephyranthes citrina bulbs, which are southern US natives, I bought from him under a different name took months to arrive from Holland and were basically just papery shells full of more papery stuff(dried out past salvaging). Even before this I wouldn't have bought anything from this person. In my opinion he's the Michagan Bulbs Co. of Ebay. Foxy, yes, there is an update as a matter of fact. The fellow in question, whom I will not call a gentleman, refused my invoice, which I expected, but he also took my picture out of his listing. I thought that would be the end of it, this person is a powerseller after all so you'd think he'd be a professional, but this evening he used a different, but very similar, powerselling ID to send me 8 different harrassing emails, many about the "poor quality" of the pictures I used in one of my store listings. I ended up feeling like I had to make a report to the Trust and Safety Board over there. Since he's a powerseller I doubt that anything will come of this single incident but you never know. I wish we had a venue for independent sellers on GW. I've made the suggestion over at the Suggestions and Comments forum but since others have made it in the past and nothing has come of it I doubt anything will this time either. Oh well, Ebay sucks but it seems to be the only show in town.

The fact that other houses might "look like this" is not necessarily the standard a court would use to determine if a copyright infringement had occurred. The usual test is if the building is "substantially similar". Courts have used the "ordinary observer" or "overall look and feel" test, under which two works will be substantially similar if a "reasonable, ordinary observer, upon examination of the two works, would 'conclude that the defendant unlawfully appropriated the plaintiff's protectable expression'." In this instance the contractor would need to show how he could have arrived at a virtually identical arrangement of unprotectable design elements without relying on the previously published work of Connor Homes. If the work was registered before the infringement occurred the author could collect statutory damages and attorney's fees instead of just an award of actual damages for lost profits and criminal penalties could apply if the infringement was willful.

Just saw that Pinterest updated their their terms of use. I haven't studied them but the language in the email is encouraging. They're addressing people's concerns with Pinterest being able to sell content. There was some paranoia from some users about getting sued for copyright infringement by the owners of the original content if Pinterest did that. I always thought that scenario was far fetched (why would Pinterest sell copyrighted material just because one of their users linked to it on their site?) but I can also see why some may have felt that it was a risk. I know others have a beef with Pinterest for other reasons but this one seems to come up a lot lately. I've seen this topic debated in this very forum so thought I'd share the news with this for those who were holding out on using Pinterest for that reason. I've found Pinterest to be very useful in keeping track of ideas for my current kitchen project. There are other tools but I find Pinterest the quickest and easiest way to keep track of ideas in a visual way. This is from the email Pinterest sent out followed by a link below to the new terms "Our original Terms stated that by posting content to Pinterest you grant Pinterest the right for to sell your content. Selling content was never our intention and we removed this from our updated Terms." At least we know they're listening. Here is a link that might be useful: Pinterest terms of use

Changing colors is very different from hiring an architect and then going through a patent process to have your design copyrighted. Some things can by copyrighted and others cannot. I've worked with several patent attorneys to get designs copyrighted. I think the question here is whether the first house decreased in value after its design details were copied or mimicked. If it did not, then there was really no financial damage done, but I suspect that a house going from being unique in a neighborhood to being one of two in the same neighborhood would affect its value. Patents can be geographically specific so that they would be in effect within a certain radius distance. If they had not gone through the copyright process, then they would not have a case, but since the patent office granted the patent, then they do. I've not personally had experience with this kind of patent before, however. How do you feel when you meet someone at a party or event wearing the same expensive dress that you have on? This is legal, of course, but it might give you an idea of the feelings of the home owners. And it's a lot easier to change a dress than a house. Do you compliment someone for wearing the same dress as you? That might be the civil thing to do, but I've made a lot of custom dresses for women who wanted to wear something that no one else had.