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womble
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Huge potential copyright issue looming me fears... - 7/9/2008 16:29:16
Just when I thought today couldn't get any worse....*sigh*
I chair a small charity, officially constituted a couple of months ago. Towards the end of last year I think it was, we had a new logo designed after it was decided our "old" look was rather dated (this venture's been in the planning for around four years and the original logo was cobbled together by me on some logo software I've got.
After much arguing and debate amongst the committee, and whittling down 6 potential designs to just one, then more arguing about colours etc., we eventually all agreed on one particular design and instructed the logo company to go ahead and produce the final versions. All was well in the world and we had some promotional material printed with the logo on for the launch we had in May, and I did a minor tweak to our website to switch the header for one featuring the "new" logo and a slight tweak to the site's colour scheme to fix the site temporarily until I start it's full redesign in a couple of weeks.
This afternoon though one of the committee texted me to say she was at her local doctor's surgery and saw a poster on the wall for a charity that's got a logo almost identical to ours. She texted me a link to their website so I could check it out, and the design's basically the same except for the colouring.
There are a couple of other charities working in the same field as us, and there's already a defined "colour scheme" for the field, so we decided to stick to that and asked the logo company to re-colour the design we liked best to fit in with that.
I've just looked again at the other charity's website, and at the original idea the logo company sent us before it was re-coloured, and it's even closer to this other charity's logo than ours is - ours is green and blue, the other charity's is orange red and blue, and the original design the logo company sent us was orange, red and green-blue. The placement of the text on the other charity's logo and the original one the logo company sent us is almost identical as well. On our final version we asked for the text to be moved across somewhat as we didn't think it was balanced where it was, but the similarity between all three is very evident (I'm guessing the logo company probably used some template or directly copied the other logo, despite their site saying all their designs are "100 % original, custom-made/No clipart".
From what we can work out the other charity's been around since the late 1980's and I've found an old version of their new website from January 2006 on the Wayback Machine which was when they launched their new logo when they merged with two other charities - the logo was made up of elements of the logos of the other organisations, who'd been around a lot longer, and it's clear to see the similarities from their former logos too...
So, what do I do now? Claiming ignorance now we're aware of the situation isn't an option, so, do I...
a) contact the logo company and demand to know what the hell's going on and what they're playing at?
b) contact the charity and explain to them what's happened?
c) the logo company's apparently a member of the BBBOnline Reliability Program - do I contact them and tell them what's happened?
d) do I do all of the above?
...goes off to report to the rest of the committee that we've got a major problem on our hands....
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d a v e
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RE: Huge potential copyright issue looming me fears... - 7/9/2008 17:33:00
start with a) then go onto b and c
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caz
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RE: Huge potential copyright issue looming me fears... - 7/9/2008 19:29:17
I agree with Dave and it also covers your back if you keep printed versions of your messages, no doubt you should also send them by snail mail and post copies back to yourself for postmarked evidence that you took appropriate measures to remedy the situation.
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BobbyDouglas
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RE: Huge potential copyright issue looming me fears... - 7/9/2008 21:55:04
I would contact the logo company and see what they have to say. Clients might not understand and have lots of questions. Much better to be on the phone with the client when you can answer more questions (after you talk to the logo bastards).
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womble
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RE: Huge potential copyright issue looming me fears... - 7/10/2008 14:07:17
Yep, we're onto that.
I've spent the afternoon removing the logo from the site and all the literature that's on the site...along with fixing my damned network and re-training my firewall on the laptop as M$'s critical security update on Tuesday sent my firewall into a critical state.  The temporary fix I did yesterday didn't work today because of course being critical the damned thing reinstalled itself today, leading to a need to reinstall an update on the firewall...only I picked the wrong upgrade to install because I was distracted, which crashed the laptop, took ages to sort out, then I've spent another two hours faffing around with the network because I lost access to the shared printer and all the shared folders because I lost all the firewall settings from before...
...meanwhile one of the committee's been in touch with NCVO (the umbrella body for voluntary organisations) for advice, another one's been in touch with the legal advice service they recommended, another was going to contact the other charity (not had a report back from her yet), I've drafted a letter to the "logo bastards" as they're now known and removed the logo from the site etc., and we've got a committee meeting at 9pm to agree the letter, get report backs from everyone on whatever they've been off doing today...all of which gives me just enough time to sort out our other site that has the logo on it (though fortunately not in as many places as the main site if memory serves correct)...
...anyone got one of those nice jackets that fastens at the back that I can borrow? 
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~~ "A cruel god ain't no god at all" ~~
~~ Erase hate. Practice love. ~~
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d a v e
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RE: Huge potential copyright issue looming me fears... - 7/11/2008 10:07:51
"...anyone got one of those nice jackets that fastens at the back that I can borrow? :) " Jaybee's got a blue one with a yellow cape :)
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David Prescott
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treetopsranch
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RE: Huge potential copyright issue looming me fears... - 7/11/2008 23:29:52
I don't know what an "asbo" is. Not in my Websters dictionary.
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Tailslide
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RE: Huge potential copyright issue looming me fears... - 7/12/2008 3:24:20
quote:
ORIGINAL: treetopsranch
I don't know what an "asbo" is. Not in my Websters dictionary.
ASBO = Anti Social Behaviour Order. It's a court-order following bad behaviour typically these days meted out to teenagers etc.
I agree with Dave - start at "a" and work through. Although these days it's often difficult to get a really original logo (so many include similar graphics) and although as Jaybee says the choice was yours in the end, I'd still say that if the logos presented were close enough to the other charity's logo then you may well be able to shout plagiarism.
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womble
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RE: Huge potential copyright issue looming me fears... - 7/13/2008 5:59:55
quote:
ORIGINAL: jaybee
Ummm surely it's just a case of changing the image and the image name which will be in the CSS that you DID use sitewide didn't you.
Um, well yes, sort of. Did use a site-wide stylesheet, but the image isn't in the CSS because the header's got a repeating background gradient that's in the CSS, though it was simple enough to simply replace the image with a transparent .gif for now, as for some reason I'd failed to put the header section of the page in an include as I normally would.
The major problem was all the literature that's on the site, though fortunately the whole collection's not up there at the mo as we're in the middle of re-writing a lot of it, so I had to take the logo off all the Word versions of the leaflets (around 30 at the moment) and stuff and just take the pdfs offline because our committee member who's currently the only member of the team with Adobe InDesign that's got the templates for the posh versions of the leaflets and stuff's currently sunning herself in the Med!
The other site we have was more of a problem because the logo is on the site in various places, but not in the header, because it's a "working in partnership with" site, so the logo just appears on various pages where the two organisations and their history's explained etc., so that meant checking through each page to find all instances of it.
quote:
Without seeing the logos I may be way off beam here, but they may not have plagiarised the logo. These logo bastards (it is becoming generic) tend to work in a very small creative pool i.e. they design safely so they follow the current fashion, they are afraid to go out of the current rut so they can come up with similar almost identical designs. When our Italian friends launched their new logo a couple of years ago, I found several that were almost identical although not in the same industry.
quote:
I'd still say that if the logos presented were close enough to the other charity's logo then you may well be able to shout plagiarism.
I'm fairly sure it can't have been accidental. It's not that the two logos are just similar - they're identical in every respect apart from the colour and the name of the organisation, and the original logo sample they came up with for us was almost the same colour as the other charity's, and the colouring's so similar, the only way I can see it being coincidental is if they were using some sort of logo design software that's got objects built into it that you can move around and re-colour etc. The comparison of the two colour schemes is below (the file upload's not working for some reason - just keeps giving an error)
Friday it got even worse, because I was just about to email them the letter we drafted when I went off searching on their site for a postal address to send a copy of the letter to, and of course found no sign of a postal address or any other contact means apart from a contact form, when I ended up on their terms and conditions page. There's a long and rambling clause written into their T&Cs that basically ends up saying words to the effect that even if they design something that's damned near identical to someone else's no-one can make any claim against them. How it's written makes you wonder if a similar thing hasn't happened before, because it doesn't just say the standard bit about the copyright being the responsibility of the client ultimately as most other logo designer's sites seem to as one of the committee found when she did a trawl round the different sites looking at their T&Cs, but it's very specifically worded.
We've not heard back yet from the legal peeps NCVO recommended, but we've a feeling given the thing with copyright law and their T&Cs, sending the letter/email in it's original form isn't going to achieve anything. Oh, and we also discovered they're not a member of the trade body they claim to be a member of, so we'll be reporting them to them for falsely using their logo on their site.
After an emergency meeting of the committee members close enough to meet up in person yesterday we've decided the main priority is to get another logo sorted out because not having an "identity" is going to delay the work that needs to be happening ASAP, so my job for today's to put a brief together in preparation for sorting out someone to do that, and a group of the committee have been elected to contact various companies and subject them to the Spanish Inquisition before making a decision on who to go with.
quote:
I can imagine the headline in the Sun "Chesterfield Woman Inserts Laptop Into Logo Bastard ". I reckon you'll only get a few hours community service and perhaps an asbo.
 You're behind the time Donkey! At Thursday's emergency meeting our fundraising co-ordinator arrived and asked if he was in the right place to talk logos, at which point our Secretary pipes up, "Madam Chair! He swore! He said the 'L' word!" My response to this was, "No, swearing is, "f****** c*** logo bastards"!", so they're now known as FCLB for short and the members of the committee who have had rather a sheltered existence have learned some new words to add to their vocabulary.
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~~ "A cruel god ain't no god at all" ~~
~~ Erase hate. Practice love. ~~
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caz
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RE: Huge potential copyright issue looming me fears... - 7/13/2008 11:56:01
Trading Standards!!!
They appear to have transgressed the Trade Descriptions Act as well by claiming to be a member of something when they are not, apart from selling you an almost identical copy of another closely related organisation's logo.
No postal address, or phone number?
Companies Act
Every company should list its company registration number, place of registration, and registered office address on its website as a result of an update to the legislation of 1985. The information, which must be in legible characters, should also appear on order forms and in emails. Such information is already required on "business letters" but the duty is being extended to websites, order forms and electronic documents.
Reckon you have them by the short and curlies.
I have Pagemaker and Adobe Acrobat if it's any use to you - although it's some time since I used Pagemaker and I am not sure that it can handle InDesign files - but PDF format is OK.
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Do not meddle in the affairs of cats, for they are subtle and will dance, or more on your keyboard.
Cheshire cat. www.doracat.co.uk
I remember when it took less than 4hrs to fly across the Atlantic.
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