Evite, the party invitation service, is threatening to sue a new competitor founded by Jonathan Abrams, for copying its Hawaii Luau look and other design templates. The Ticketmaster unit isn't in any position to get in a strop over intellectual property.

Back in November 2003, spooked by the growth of social networks, Evite revamped its service. Evite 2.0 was intended to "mimic" sites such as Friendster, by introducting personal profile pages viewable by friends and other guests. And the founder of the site that provided such inspiration? Jonathan Abrams, of course.

Despite four years of lumbering effort, the ancient invitation service has been unable to transform itself from a single-purpose utility; but, as long as Evite keeps trying, it should acknowledge some debt for Abrams — at the very least, by giving him a pass on a few generic invitation designs.

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