We all know that steem is open sourced, but steemit.com is very much not.

Steemit.com is a centralized website owned and operated by Steemit, Inc. while the steem blockchain is an open source project with many apps built on top of it.

Some interesting things have been coming up lately in regards to the intellectual property rights of steemit.com

There have been several "clones" of steemit.com popping up over the past few months that look almost identical to steemit.com with only some minor changes in colors and a logo/name change.

The rest of it, almost identical.

I won't name the ones I am referring to here, but just know that there are more than one out there.

My question is, can they do this?

I am no attorney and not at all up to speed on intellectual property rights laws, but from doing a quick google search it sounds like these clones may be breaking copyright laws.

This is from the steemit.com website:

“Steemit,”, the Steemit logo and any other product or service names, logos, slogans that may appear on the Service are trademarks of Steemit, Inc., and, may not be copied, imitated, or used, in whole or in part, unless explicitly permitted or without first receiving written permission from us to do so. The look and feel of steemit.com and the Service is protected by copyright © Steemit, Inc. All rights reserved. You may not duplicate, copy, or reuse any portion of the HTML/CSS, Javascript, or visual design elements or concepts without express written permission."

(Source: https://steemit.com/tos.html)

This last part is of particular interest to me:

"The look and feel of steemit.com and the Service is protected by copyright © Steemit, Inc. All rights reserved. You may not duplicate, copy, or reuse any portion of the HTML/CSS, Javascript, or visual design elements or concepts without express written permission."

Reading that, it sounds very much like these clones are violating intellectual property rights unless they have received permission from Steemit, Inc. which I highly doubt is the case.