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Comment by citricsquid | Hacker News Reader

I agree:

> He laid claims to a number of our designs such as our website utilizing a top navigation bar, our photo of the designer operating a sewing machine, etc.

> In short, the claims are as outlandish as we perceived

If the claims are so ridiculous why haven't they posted the claim? Why are we supposed to trust what they have to say?

Also this line reads very curiously:

> the mentor gave them words of blessing for future success.

it's as if they're trying to say "he said it was okay to take the work we did there and use it in the future"? I don't get that sentence.

Something about the way this is written feels weird.

View on HN

"Thanks for all your help help, Mentor. We'll be off!"

"Sure thing kids, go crazy. Do whatever you want! Good luck! You'll need it!"

[Kids post to kickstarter and get tons of funding. Mentor decides that maybe he wants some of that action.]

How much funding had been pledged before Kickstarter pulled the plug?

They had reached $74,000 I believe.

Based on the conflicting statements the interns wrote, this is how I would put it:

"Thanks for all your help help, Mentor. We'll be off! [And we're taking your designs with us!]"

"Sure thing kids, go crazy. Do whatever you want! [I don't know that you're taking any of my designs to create competing products.] Good luck! You'll need it [because you don't have any designs and it will take you a while to come up with good ones]!"

Kids post to kickstarter using their mentor's proprietary designs, and get tons of funding to make products based on their mentor's designs.

Mentor sees them stealing the designs he spent months/years working on and sues.

A admittedly cursory look at both websites doesn't show any obvious copying (unless there is some sort if internal structural magic you can't see in pictures). Besides, the article only mentioned things like the website navigation and promo pictures. Not product infringement. Although as others have mentioned, we are only getting one side of the story.

It's an attempt at a web 2.0 'serious reply' while being very concerned about coming across as reasonable. If there's more to this story the people behind Vinted Goods are in for a rude shock that good PR isn't about a reasonable sounding blog post with a community outreach angle. That's a tactic for taking on faceless multinationals who move slowly.

The way it's written feels weird because English is not their first language.

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