

LogoThief - eksith
http://www.logothief.com/

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bung
I used to live with a designer who independently came up with many ideas that
we ended up seeing show up over the years. He had come up with this video idea
of people's thoughts bubbling over their heads, nothing special, and in the
short term a Toronto Dominion bank commercial had the exact same thing. Many
designers read/resource all the same sites, it's no wonder there are similar
designs. I figure this explains some of the "less compelling" duplicates,
perhaps it was just people thinking along the same lines?

~~~
DanBC
I agree, but which designs on the subbed site are less compelling?

~~~
GhotiFish
this one by a wide margin

[http://www.logothief.com/jose-cant-think-outside-the-
square/](http://www.logothief.com/jose-cant-think-outside-the-square/)

also some of these are different enough to very easily be reached
independently.

[http://www.logothief.com/the-great-international-coffee-
cup-...](http://www.logothief.com/the-great-international-coffee-cup-rip-off/)

Even I designed a logo like that once for a coffee shop at my university.

~~~
phaus
A couple of the coffee cups might not be direct copies, but the majority of
them clearly are. The proportions and shapes are all nearly identical.

If you described this logo to ten random web designers and asked them to draw
what you described, you would end up with ten considerably different looking
cups of coffee. With these logos, almost all of the coffee cups are the same.

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vwadhwani
I once hired a designer to create a logo and only months later discovered he
had poached it from somewhere else. Not all of these companies are "logo
thieves", some simply didn't know that the designer they paid to create
something original had copied something.

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allochthon
Honestly, I don't think this is stealing in more than just a technical sense.
This is little different that a mashup or a cover of an older song. And some
of the newer versions are a little better.

Not a big fan of the concept of "intellectual property." The site itself is
kind of fun.

~~~
hristov
I think it is stealing and it is pretty bad. Intellectual property can be
misused when it is used to capture something (whether an artistic expression
or an invention) that is not very unique or inventive or creative and would
have been easily used and discovered by many others had the original
"inventor" or "artist" not created it. At that point, intellectual property
becomes oppressive.

But this is not the case here. These are unique artistic expressions. True
they are simple, but it is impossible to imagine someone creating the same
thing without knowing the original. There is practically an unlimited number
of ways one can convey a logo. Protecting the rights of one logo does not
meaningfully limit the rights of others (if you ignore the "right" to get
artistic work done for free).

In these cases we should allow the artist to have a right to their creation.

~~~
allochthon
You've described the technical meaning of stealing very well. But I don't
think it's ontologically possible for a person to own something like these
logos. Such ownership is a legal fiction set up by legal traditions whose
intellectual property protections have started to become more of a problem
than a solution. Their remaining relevance it seems to me is to empower
corporations such as IBM and Microsoft to extract rent (in the context of
patents), and to give money to attorneys and politicians and lobbyists. It is
hard for me to have much sympathy for the notion that such protections are in
place in the present context primarily for artist making the logo (in the case
of trademark, etc.) when there are so many other interests that hang just a
little bit back in the background.

In most cases on the site the copies are undeniably in bad taste. But not
something to be protected by law, in my opinion.

~~~
xerophtye
Well considering people charge a lot for logo design, and apparently it does
take expertise and effort (remember the Yahoo logo debacle?), so shouldn't it
be a crime that some logo designer charges a huge sum of money and just copy
pastes some other designer's hard work as his own? How would you feel if
someone is making money off of your hard work?

Btw I am not entirely sure if the original artist is pressing charges against
the copies, but by law, you should have an option to.

I support you in the fight against patent trolls, but this is just out right
theft :/

~~~
kazagistar
I don't mind people earning money off my hard work? I already did it, and was
already paid for it. The only problem I see is that customers are being
scammed into thinking they purchased a unique logo... there is contract law to
resolve such problems.

~~~
xerophtye
Oh and you might not mind it, but some people might. The law should provide
them protection. The choice to press charges or not should be Yours. There
SHOULD be a choice.

Btw, since we are discussing copyrights as a whole, this reminds me of the
oatmeal incident. Other sites just picking up his comics and using them to get
traffic (and thus diverting traffic what would have been potentially his) is
completely wrong. It is depriving him of his hard earned money via those
visitors. Now shouldn't the Law help him get what is rightfully his?

I think i understand where you are coming from, these things should never
hinder creative process. And you are right. But copyrights exist fundamentally
to guard against plagiarism. Not to say "i thought of this first! you can't
think of it now!", but yes, sadly in recent times IP has come to that...

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skaushik92
At what point does this go from plagiarism to creatively modifying another
piece of art?

For example, epic nation's logo is clever in that by rotation, it changes the
EZ logo to EN. Is that necessarily plagiarism? Isn't that more akin to a
"remix"?

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AnotherDesigner
While designers like myself often think of ourselves as the victims here,
often the companies are victims as well. Many of them spent money, good money
in some cases, to end up with a shady designer or agency ripping off work and
selling it as their own. The client is not only left without a mark to
represent their brand, having to start all over but they've lost the money
they already spent and risk lawsuits for the infringement. This is another
good reason to find a reputable designer you can trust. A local designer
you've met face to face and know a real name and address will help
tremendously as many shady "designers" like to hide behind the anonymity of
the internet. This is also the reason why many crowd-sourced services and
competitions have been caught with blatantly stolen logos for sale.

~~~
sheetjs
Is there any form of recourse if you discover that a designer you hired
actually stole a logo?

~~~
coldtea
Sue him?

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Glyptodon
While several of the examples posted are egregious, I also find several not
all that compelling.

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phaus
Really? I looked at all of them and only found one that wasn't an obvious
copy. I've seen similar sites where lots of the accusations seemed sketchy,
but these are all really blatant.

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kordless
And it's not just limited to logos:
[http://www.geekceo.com/static/images/zoto_zoho.png](http://www.geekceo.com/static/images/zoto_zoho.png)

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Dogamondo
There's an old saying by one Mr Picasso that fits this nicely. It's often
mistakenly attributed to one Mr Jobs an awful lot too...

~~~
gk1
"Good artists copy, great artists steal."

That one?

~~~
marquis
Which in itself is attributed to many - I first heard it via Stravinsky, but
apparently it's not Picasso's either.

[http://quoteinvestigator.com/2013/03/06/artists-
steal/](http://quoteinvestigator.com/2013/03/06/artists-steal/)

~~~
phaus
I wouldn't be surprised it Picasso hadn't ever said it at all. Even if he had,
Picasso created his own genre of art. Actions speak louder than words.

It really doesn't matter where the quote came from. Even when put into proper
context (which has rarely happened in the past) the logic behind it is shaky.

Great artists do imitate, as students they copy the techniques and methods of
those who came before them, in order to learn and master the skills they will
need to make their own art. When they are ready, the truly great artists then
proceed to create things that we've never seen before.

~~~
marquis
In the context of Music, which I understand better than the visual arts,
imitation is what a young composer or musician will do. Once they develop
their own voice, 'stealing' becomes a thing of great skill: remixing, as it
were. In Stravinsky's case, he lifted content from Webern and made it new.
Bartok did it with Shostakovich who did it in turn to Tchaikovsky and on and
on and circularly.. one of the wonders of studying musical history is tracing
the influences, and the mastery of those who took what came before them and
made it new.

