One of the reasons to report an item is that it is content stolen from another published work.
How strict is this though?
I have seen items that are semi-similar to the idea of the Venom symbiote from Spiderman, I've seen something akin to the every flavour jelly beans from Harry Potter.
Now, obviously human creativity is mostly a remix of a remix, everything we create is influenced by everything we've seen before, so how direct do these infringements have to be?
Should I be reporting stuff that is very obviously influenced by other work or only stuff that uses actual proper, trademarked/copyright names and content?
There's at least one entry that people keep reporting because it's very clearly an adaptation of a plot device from a popular TV show. It's almost certainly not going to win over voters looking for originality, but it doesn't technically infringe on anyone's intellectual property, so it's not actually against the rules.
If you see these types of problem in an item, and you think that's reason enough for it not to succeed, by all means, don't vote for it... but don't bother reporting it, either.
So, don't report if it isn't a clear and blatant infringement. At very worst, if it makes it up to the top of the ranking, the judges can rule on it then :P
Thank you.
I had not reported any yet as they were more heavily influenced than direct rip offs.
I also wonder how often it's totally accidental. I was once creating a sci-fi setting and I recreated the American Civil War in space completely by accident, it was just a war over cyborg slavery between the inner system and outer system.
I ended up making the thing so similar that my American friends (I am Canadian) didn't believe me that it was accidental.
If you flag it, the judges will review it and decide if it needs to be DQ'd.
We keep having to say this, but *PLEASE* don't say anything about an item that might break its anonymity.