I've always been a big fan of 37Signals. They used their blog to magnify their unique take on design and have built a good business providing applications that are focused and easy to use. But the key word now is "business."

I am all too aware of copyright law and the need to enforce the uniqueness of specific design elements that can be deemed proprietary. But I believe 37Signals stepped over the line of practicality when basically sending a cease and desist order to Mike Murray because he was a bit too honest relative to his admiration for 37Signals design.

Mike's account of the situation is here [1].

I guess it would be nice for 37S to eat their own dog food a bit. They talk about being open and this new generation type of company. Small, focused, effective. But in reality, they are like everyone else - very corporate. They have employees and bills to pay and investors to keep happy. So they felt compelled to come down on a sole proprietor that was just sending them some props (as you are supposed to do in Web 2.0).

The sad thing is that Mike never needed to mention where he got the inspiration for his design. He would have gotten "away" with it. You don't think 99% of design is inspired by something else? Of course it is. The look and feel of 37Signals' Getting Real page is neither unique nor novel and I suspect unless Mike literally copied their CSS layout, they wouldn't be able to enforce much of anything.

But the statement was made. Jason Fried runs a business, not a movement. I guess it was bound to happen, since success makes company's act differently. It's still disappointing. Really disappointing.

And no, I'm not linking to 37Signals site anymore. They'll probably sue me for self-publishing my book, since they inspired that go to market model.