<div dir="ltr"><div><div><div><div><div>In essence, that's true. You can't take a theme, say, CrazyBananas and simply resell it as CrazyBananas in it's exact form. As a whole a theme is a creative, copyrighted work. However, the code, you could take and build your own theme from which should be richly different and sold under a different name, say BlueFire.<br>
</div><br></div>Ethically though, most people pay attribution, for example "BlueFire, based on the CrazyBananas theme", although attribution is not required.<br><br></div>I really wouldn't recommend taking someone's theme and tweaking it enough just to be able to legally sell it, in the long run this really isn't good for you or your customers.<br>
<br></div>Instead, grab a boilerplate theme that's especially created for new theme designers/developers that want to get started building their own themes:<br><br><a href="http://wordpress.org/themes/search.php?q=boilerplate">http://wordpress.org/themes/search.php?q=boilerplate</a><br>
<br></div>Please keep in mind that the above is a generalized answer to your question, not sure if you're just reviewing a theme that has these clauses or if you're asking for yourself.<br></div>