Just for curiosity's sake I was wondering just where you would draw the line when gathering ideas for a new website design? For example, lets say an individual was creating a new site and they wanted their header to resemble digital points. Would it ethical/legal for a person to use the same layout if the color scheme was different, and they went about developing the content in their own way instead of copying and pasting code? I've wondered this for awhile and want to get some opinions...what do you guys think?
You can't use someone else identical layout (only if that is licensed under a free license type), no matter if you are using different colors. You can get inspiration from some elements you like from other design , but not use their code , images or css styles. Anyway , lots of websites layouts are very similar , but you can't copy entirely their design.
If you're using the same basic code as another site (say vBulletin), and the other site wasn't heavily themed, your site is going to look like theirs. But to copy the look of another site? Apple sued Microsoft for that. (And lost because, due to the fact that they had copied the look from someone else, they really had no standing.)
Do not use other website copy. Try to give your website look more unique to convert more traffic to you new website design.