Item Hard Rejected - WordPress shop

Hello Everyone,

Recently we got a hard reject to our submitted item into WordPress - Ecommerce category. They provided the following message:
“Sorry but this is far too similar to your theme Notredam which was hard disabled due to a DMCA. Attempting to resubmit hard disabled files as new items is considered abuse and can result in account disablement.”

New theme - demo here
Old one - demo here

I want to ask for your advice and answer our three main questions regarding our theme:

  1. Is it really similar with our previous theme?

  2. Why it is so bad to make item on the base of our previous one if it is not already available on themeforest?

  3. Is our new theme ready for themeforest market, what do you think?

Thank you in advance