I completely understand the difference between "Borrowing" ideas and simply re-writing the exact same story. Yes Star Wars borrowed ideas and plots that have been around long before 1976 but in this case one movie is almost a mirror image of the other in terms of plot structure and characters. It's one thing to be "influenced by" and another to rip off. This isn't a case of simply "Writing to Formula" as the point that corellian77 is trying to make, there's just WAY too many similarities to the point of plagiarism.