Dan Cederholm, a well-known designer from Salem, Massachusetts, stirred furious debate within the online design community yesterday after he accused LogoMaid, a less-than-reputable logo creation service, of stealing his work. He discovered an alleged ripoff of his SimpleBits logo being sold on the site for a paltry $199, grabbed a screen shot, and posted it to his Flickr account.
It’s not an exact copy, obviously, but enough elements are similar to warrant serious concern. The four brackets, surrounding a cube-like object split into sections — it’s all there. Aside from the colour palette, there isn’t very much original work in LogoMaid’s version. If you could even call that originality. A quick overlay of Cederholm’s logo with LogoMaid’s makes the supposed plagiarism all the more obvious:
In situations like these, one would expect the offending company to squash the matter as quickly as possible, right? Surely they have nothing to gain by furthering any bad publicity and angering an entire community in the process, right? Right? Well, somebody should have sent that particular memo to Paul Viluda, owner of LogoMaid. Adding his two cents to the Flickr comment thread, Viluda accused Cederholm of stealing their work and threatened him with a lawsuit. He then apparently created a number of fake users to defend his position.
Predictably, word of the situation has spread quickly. John Gruber, of Daring Fireball fame, posted a quick write-up on the matter and the story hit the front page of Digg about two hours ago. People have started jumping on the bandwagon, pointing out other examples of LogoMaid’s intellectual property theft, including an extremely obvious copy of the Apple logo.
Unfortunately, LogoMaid is not the only site out there suspected of peddling stolen designs and “borrowing” the work of talented, hard-working designers. It’s a problem that has plagued those in the creative arts since the beginning of time and it affects everyone. Writers, painters, photographers, designers, illustrators — no one is immune to the threat of less-talented people leeching off their work.
Fortunately, as Gruber points out in his post, the solution is an easy one — Shine the light on these vermin. The more people who speak up when these situations are discovered, the harder it will be for thieves to profit from the hard work of others.
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I’d add “WITHOUT PREJUDICE” to the top of this article if I were you, otherwise you could end up in a lawsuit for badmouthing LogoMaid (we all know how sue happy the are)
Matt, I highly doubt they have the money and/or guts for that. They just like to hear themselves talk.
If a company could file a lawsuit every time someone berated them publicly, the courts would be filled to the brim with cases. I really don’t think LogoMaid has the time, inclination, finances, or resources to sue a blogger for stating an opinion. But, just to be safe, I’ve added the word “supposed” or “alleged” to two different spots in this post.
The message remains the same: LogoMaid’s credibility is suspect.
The scary part is that this “vilords” guy actually thinks he is “right” to some degree. I guess I am too sheltered in my little world to realize this type of behavior is probably more common than I’ve ever known.
I can’t quite decide if he thinks he’s right, or if he’s just trying to wedge his way out of an embarrassing situation. Either way, it doesn’t look particularly good on him, or the company.
The notion that adding those two words - or even the words “supposed” or “alleged” - would be enough to deter a lawsuit by these clowns is probably not correct.
People can sue for anything they like. If they decided to come after me, or any blog that did a write-up on this situation, I firmly believe it would be an extremely short case. They really wouldn’t have much of a leg to stand on. Although I feel my original wording is covered under law as a statement of opinion, making such a small change requires no effort on my part.
I agree with Matthom, it’s very scary how someone/company can be either so ignorant, bad or malicious. Normally in cases like this, the offender takes the work down, maybe even sends a private apology, hoping the embarrassing moment will pass away swiftly.
After the damage that has already been done, taking the logo down and apologizing is the least LogoMaid can do. If I were Cederholm, I’d be looking at my legal options at this point, particularly after being threatened with a lawsuit.
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