The crime scene: LogoGarden.com
The Suspect
Every evening I like to sit down with my iPad and read through all the various sites and publications I enjoy following. While browsing one of my feeds I stumbled upon an article about a new web site called LogoGarden.com. I managed to read about a paragraph before getting disgusted.
I wasn’t in the mood to read about another moron whoring our industry for filthy lucre, so I wrote it off as just another fast food logo service and moved on to more preferable reading, not even bothering to visit their site.
A few days later I was contacted by fellow designer Leighton Hubbell who informed me that he had found some logo designs of mine and many others on the LogoGarden.com site. At first I didn’t make the connection with the previous article I had stumbled upon while reading, but once I visited the site I recognized the annoying Cheshire Cat photo of the founder John Williams and it all clicked.
Mind you, I have never met the designer John Williams. I’m not even sure he is a designer? Mainly because I’ve yet to see any work that is distinctly his own work? This isn’t merely hyperbole either, over the last several weeks I’ve seen absolutely no evidence that this jack ass can design himself out of a wet paper bag, let alone create an original logo design. (Frankly I think he’s a marketing guy who has seen others do the same thing and decided to do it himself and claim the title of a designer.)
The Crime Scene
After auditing LogoGarden.com I discovered a total of 35 of my logos being sold on their website. 11 of which are displayed as sold examples. So Mr. Williams has already made over $800 off my work. Like I said, I don’t know this guy, so I can only judge him by his actions in context of this whole unfolding situation and so far I can say with the highest confidence that he’s an undisputed class A dork weed.
LogoGarden.com McLogo interface design.
The Evidence
The biggest hassle in dealing with a copyright infringement is dealing with a copyright infringement.
The whole process is a major pain in the ass. I had to spend hours going through their antiquated flash GUI to isolate all the various marks of mine they had infringed upon and take a screen captures of everything to document it. The image above shows the first two marks of mine I found on LogoGarden.com and the image below shows the same designs from my portfolio.
Apparently the person doing the infringing feels an extra dot added to the end of each element will magically turn it into an original creative idea I guess? In reality it’s proof of nefarious intent. And I love what Bill Gardner of LogoLounge.com shared regarding these infringements and the subtle changes in logo detailing:
“In fact, such action by you clearly indicates that your infringement was with full knowledge that you did not have a right to copy these images and constitutes willful copyright infringement.”
You can read the full article Bill Gardner wrote for Rockport Publishing here. Since his original blog article, Bill has posted an update showing that Mr. Williams infringement wasn’t a mere graphic happenstance, but rather a systematic and premeditated rip-off. Check out the indisputable evidence here.
Steps mark for P&G and a Microsoft Windows Gaming Concept.
The Vics
It took me roughly two hours to discover all 35 of my marks being sold on LogoGarden.com. I’m only showing a fraction of them in this post. (See image below) As I went through the site I recognized work from a lot of different designers other than myself too.
Most prominent to me was the work of Gardner design, so I contacted Bill Gardner and notified him regarding LogoGarden.com and soon after he found nearly 200 marks of theirs being sold on the site as well. The result of his encounter with John Williams lead to the above mentioned article on Rockport Publishings blog.
My friend and designer Brent Pelloquin of Prejean Creative discovered 28 of their firms logos being sold on LogoGarden.com also.
The list of infringed designers keeps growing as more people are made aware of LogoGarden.com. Other design friends of mine like Jeff Fisher, Paul Howalt, Maggie Macnab, Felix Sockwell, Jeff Pollard have all discovered their work being peddled like graphic snake oil by John Williams as well.
Six of the 35 marks ripped off by LogoGarden.com.
Not only has LogoGarden.com stolen my art but they’ve done a half ass job at re-creating the designs as well. Notice how they auto-traced the rhino linear logo I designed (shown above) and attempted to make it solid shapes? I’ve seen brain dead monkeys on crack produce better work than this. Yet John Williams proclaims to be a seasoned veteran heading an award-winning design team.
Sorry Johnny boy you’re nothing but a bottom feeding hack and at best a wannabe designer.
Imitation isn’t always flattering
A handful of my marks were displayed on LogoGarden.com as real-world examples (See below) whose apparent buyers were so satisfied with their logo purchase that they offered up compelling kudos like “I have a lot more…” let me finish that for you lady “money to throw away!”
I’m sure that’s what she was going to say, because she looks awfully pensive in her avatar image.
LogoGarden.com rip on left my original mark on right.
I seriously doubt these testimonials are real, I think they’re all fakes because the links go no where when you click on them. Matter of fact I’m not completely convinced that John Williams is actually a guy named John Williams? If so he’s a very stupid individual for associating his name so closely with such a high level of design malfeasance.
I do however think he’s your garden variety design Flim Flam Man. No need to pardon that pun either.
LogoGarden.com rip on left my original mark on right.
Having my hard work ripped off is a pain, and having it ripped off by a dip shit like John Williams is a creative injury. But having it ripped off and used for an erectile product logo is just adding needless design insult upon the injury. Look at that awesome kerning! I won’t bother finishing this lady’s testimony, it’s too easy of a target.
Interrogating the Thief
Shortly after discovering my work on their site I emailed a DMCA letter (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) to LogoGarden.com notifying them of the copyright infringement. It’s also a good idea to send it to the infringing sites hosting service as well, which in this case is rackspace.com. (You can create your own using my template here.)
The other day I finally got an email back from the head weasel himself. You can read the conversation yourself in the image below. (Read in order A, B, and C.)
Needless to say the communication was pointless, this guy is a complete and utter scum bag. I’m actually running out of colorful adjectives to describe this butt head. He’s a piece of work.
And I’m so sorry to bruise your fragile sense of moral outrage Johnny, but I’m not buying it. You know you’re an unethical bastard so you’re not fooling anyone at taking offense at that comment. Nice try.
My correspondence with John Williams.
Copyright 101
The problem with copyright law is that unless you legally copyright each piece of artwork (every graphic you post within your online portfolio) you have no legal recourse to seek punitive damages no matter what evidence you have. This in my opinion is highly unrealistic for designers like myself. I create hundreds of images a year and I can’t afford to drop $50 on every single one I create? Who can realistically do that other than large multi-national corporations?
Sure I have some of my designs officially copyrighted but most aren’t. Ironically the copyright law states that the copyright by default goes to the creator of the given design and they own the copyright unless it’s been sold to another or created via work for hire etc. But that is a paper tiger that means nothing in the court of law unless you have officially registered the artwork with the US copyright office.
All I can do is send off a DMCA letter that requires the infringer to remove my art from their site and cease and desist using it. They have to act on the letter but as long as they remove the art there is no recourse for seeking any type of usage fees or collecting money on anything they sold using your work.
So design ass holes like John Williams fully understand this and exploit the loop hole as long as they can get away with it.
The Creative Industrial Complex
Whether our industry as a whole wants to admit it or not, design in all it’s various forms is now considered a commodity in the eyes of the public at least. This poor public perception is only facilitated, encouraged, and compounded by the likes of LogoGarden.com.
The growth of the creative industrial complex will only continue to increase with each passing year. These new design ventures will be fueled by unethical people on par with John Williams and they’ll continue to exploit the inadequate copyright laws in order to make a quick buck on other peoples hard work.
John Williams wet dream for his site however is to grow the business model to the point that he can flip it and sell it off to a larger corporation. Of course his proof of concept for this is Logoworks.com who was bought out by HP. Here’s a few other companies who degrade our profession in hopes of doing the same thing Johnny boy dreams of.
- 99designs.com
- LogoMaker.com
- CrowdSpring.com
For the Love of Design
I entered this career because I enjoy being creative. I like to create things. I like to think, conceptualize, and form ideas. Draw, develop and execute those ideas with clever creativity and skillful precision. All of this is done in a frame work of helping others achieve their goals and grow their own businesses. It’s rewarding and the fact I get paid to do it is just the icing on the design cake for me.
The infamous copyright infringer John Williams.
So why does John Williams do it? It’s obvious he’s not in it to design. He seems to relish his online thiefdom, so that tells me he’s a design weasel, a creative vermin, an artistic parasite, a graphic leach sucking the creative blood from other peoples work for his own gain. John isn’t motivated by the love of design, he’s focused on the love of money. And as the good book says “The love of money is the root of all kinds of evil.”
What kind of creative life is that John? Stop stealing other designers work, grab a frickin’ pencil and do it yourself for once in your life.
Keywords: Commentary, Copyright, Rant, LogoGarden.com
Excellent job Von. I really hope this guy goes down.
I did want to mention that you can register completely unrelated unpublished works as a group for one price of $30. That offers you the same protection as registering as a published work, at a much lower cost. I’ve done this quite a bit and it works well.
Still I admit it’s not a perfect system, as it’s not always practical to register things before they are published.
I think it’s frankly disgusting that people can get away with blatant acts of theft such as this. I don’t believe John Williams even exists and if he does, he’s certainly not spent 15 years at a top branding agency. Surely no self-respecting designer would stoop so low, giving a middle finger to fellow designers and the industry as a whole with this scam.
Can your clients not attempt to sue the site as well?
I don’t think I’ve laughed this hard (while crying inside, too) at a blog post in a long time. Your brutal honesty and humor is a great departure from legal BS and political correctness, and rightly so… you absolutely should be pissed off at this outrageous violation of your work. I applaud you and others in the design community for continuing to keep this issue in the forefront of our industry and I hope Logo Garden gets shut down for good.
I enjoyed hearing you speak at this year’s CFC and I hope you can bring your experience from this Logo Garden debacle into a seminar or breakfast roundtable at next year’s event. It’s a great warning about the uglier side of our industry and those who exploit our work.
Hi Von, I just called and left a message. Read your article and agree he is a complete and utter disgrace to the design field to put it mildly. I got emails through Rackspace from LogoGarden accusing me of harassment when I asked him to remove the twenty one logos he had up on his site. Only three were apparently used by his clients. The time I wasted, like you, really made me angry. Anyway, just wanted to share my story. Very similar story to yours.
Tim,
Thanks I did know that and I usually gang up 3-4 on a sheet and do it that way myself. I just wanted to simplify my explanation for the post. The cost though was around $45 the last time I did it though so I just figured $50 would make the post a bit more relevant for a longer period of time?
Paul,
I agree, I think it maybe a fake persona in terms of a the name and the history he attaches to it. And to answer your question I have notified several of my clients whose logos appear in their archive and they are all following it up through their legal counsel.
I also notified the NBA legal department because of this: http://goo.gl/LjuAq
And the ad agency behind this national brand: http://goo.gl/WJM1o
So I think he’ll get heat from those places for sure.
Jen,
That is a great idea! I just emailed HOW regarding this and told them I’d love to do a breakfast roundtable on this so I’ll let everyone know if that happens. Thanks.
Donna,
Harassment? If asking to have your stolen work removed from LogoGarden.com is harassment than what would John Williams call me? Just since posting this three other designers totaling “40+” infringed logos on LogoGarden.com
Hey Johnny, shut up and take your medicine!
I feel your pain.
As a teacher I want to ask permission to share this post with graphics students. It would mean showing your logos, and the imitations of them, with your permission of course.
Lukas,
Absolutely! No problem what so ever. Thanks.
Hey, that’s our PowerLock logo we had commissioned for a client!! I’ve been keeping track of this tomfoolery. I guess I better check and see if our logo, done by Graham Smith has been ripped off. PATHETIC!
Reprehensible, and I hope this guy gets what’s coming to him.
To expand on what Tim said earlier about copyright registration, it’s my understanding that you have a 3 month grace period to file, and the suggestions I’ve read are to publish the “collection” as Tim suggested every 3 months with all work in that timeframe.
Looking over the Copyright Basics PDF [http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ1.pdf] here is the relevant info:
“If registration is made within three months after publication of the work or prior to an infringement of the work, statutory damages and attorney’s fees will be available to the copyright owner in court actions. Otherwise, only an award of actual damages and profits is available to the copyright owner.”
And more from a lawyer: http://www.yourlegalcorner.com/articles.asp?id=109&cat=trademark
Great post Von, love your work buddy – Great observation too about Williams being a marketing huckster and not a legitimate “designer” in any form of the word. Hadn’t considered that, but I believe you’re take is spot-on. The only title of “artist” he’s truly qualified to claim is “CON-artist”! Thanks for the excellent post.
That totally sucks. When I saw you post about this on Twitter and saw the name Logo Garden all I thought was, “You grow ‘em, we harvest ‘em.”
Bastards.
Von,
I have dealt with some of this myself. Take a look at this article:
http://www.linkspiel.com/2011/02/copyright-infringement-links/
It talk about how to craft the DMCA but instead of sending it to the infringing website you send it to the hosting company. They are very quick to respond and unless they get a defense from the infringing website they can and will take the website down.
I used this tactic on blog posts that were being stolen from our site. The hosting companies were very quick to respond and only gave the infringing site 24-48 hours to reply, if they didn’t then the site was taken down. I tried going to the site owner and many times got the run around, but once the site was taken down you should have seen how fast they took down my content.
Good luck!!
Wow. Reading that pissed me off so much I had to step outside and have a cigarette.
These kinds of articles are already coming up THIRD when I do a google search for logogarden. A strong keyworded loaded blog about this issue is worth more than any individual legal assault against this company, so well done Vonster.
Also of note, they have not responded directly to it on the facebook page. Any customer doing even a nominal amount of research before buying will quickly discover what they’re getting into with this company. I love it!
Hi Von,
Great post, sorry about the stealing.
I have to add though that copyrighting isn’t hard to do. You can take an entire month or more’s worth of work and copyright it under one group name as long as none of it has yet gone to print. So, you could copyright 50 logos at once for the one fee. That’s $50 well spent.
You should do it – everyone should. If you had done this, this company would likely be put out of business over night for their shady business – and a message would be sent to their clients.
Adam,
Thanks man! I took a licensing course a few years back and they covered groups but said 4-5 on a page for the flat rate fee? I’m talking to a second IP attorney Monday so I’m going to ask him about this. If you’re right (I hope you are) yeah that’s a no-brainer.
Thanks again.
I still see so many logos on there that are stolen, great article Von .. such a shame
Great post, I have been following this through logomotives and a few other designers. I find the blatant stealing and arrogance of it all to be astounding, Im glad there is a push “back” from the industry and hopefully we will see logo garden shut down and a “never to work in the industry again” brand slapped across Johns business cards.
Thank you, Von, for taking the time and effort to become one of the most authoritative vigilantes on this subject!. You speak for 99% of designers[ I hope] and your sentiments are shared. Awareness can do more damage than a lawsuit sometimes.
The commentary has been great, and informative.
Maddening Von! I hope this helps rid the world of these kinds of Weasels but I doubt it.
D.
About a week ago, design professionals alerted us that some symbols in LogoGarden.com’s vast symbol library were copies of existing work. We posted an immediate response On LogoGarden’s Facebook page and other social channels, we immediately responded, saying we would remove any offending symbols as they were spotted. In days that followed, we did so and let the design community know. We ourselves found other apparent duplicates and removed them. I wish to thank the design professionals who helped us identify offending symbols.
Meanwhile, a few professional designers came to believe that systematic copying of existing work is how we operate. It’s anything but. LogoGarden was victimized and has taken steps to avoid a recurrence.
For one thing, we discovered that the problem symbols came from a small handful of dishonest design brokers—after we had contracted and paid them for strictly original work. Going forward, we are sticking with designers and brokers who have proven themselves honest and reliable—as well as talented and accomplished. I think they do a terrific job for us.
That’s not all. We’ve launched an internal review of the entire LogoGarden symbol library. It’s a huge job, a month’s work for our team. Already days into the process, we expect to be finished the third week of September.
Either now or in the future, if you do spot something questionable, please alert me at John@LogoGarden.com. I will personally ensure we take immediate action.
Thanks for your understanding. We may be competitors having very different business models, but we do share a goal with integrity: to offer clean, high quality design choices for people who need them.
Thanks for your understanding.
John Williams,
President, LogoGarden.com
John,
I would like to know what steps will also be taken to compensate the designers whose work you have sold at a profit, the customers to whom you’ve sold stolen intellectual property and the clients of ours whose logos you have infringed upon? Simply removing the stolen logos from your library is a start and it does address the copyright issue but it does not repair the harm caused to us and our clients. It hardly seems right that you profit from stolen goods – and it certainly is not legal.
Scott Lewis,
Iconify.it, LLC
Dear John,
You are the kind of scum that keeps good and true designers from being able to get decent jobs in this economy. You make us seem like our worth is some pathetic value and can be cheapened by packaging it in some kind of “get rich quick” or “fast food” scam type website. The people you swindle don’t know any better, but the rest of us know. So, wipe that stupid grin off your face, your time will come.
Mr. Edens,
A hard working Art Director
John,
Unfortunately I have to say that your explanation does stretch credulity to the breaking point. If this had been a matter of even “10″ marks I’d have no problem giving you the benefit of the doubt but that wasn’t the case. We’re talking a vast majority of the work on your site is a direct copy.
A so-called brand specialist with 15 years under his belt giving a thumbs up to launch the site with this amount of extensive infringement without knowing or even recognizing a problem is a bit too much to swallow.
You say now “We are sticking with designers and brokers who have proven themselves honest and reliable—as well as talented and accomplished.” Really. Let me guess…you’ll be mining the design well spring that is Bangladesh so they can cash in on their extensive cut of $79.
BTW you can keep saying we share the same goal of integrity but you’re just deceiving yourself and insulting the intelligence of the design community with comments like that.
Do us all a favor and use your artist talent where it can really make a difference, the custodial arts.
Von
PS: My logos are still on your site loser.
Great suggestion Adam McCaule, (copyright 50 logos at once).
Von, sorry to hear your awesome work is being ripped-off.
This article made me so angry. I have put LogoGarden.com on my list of websites to avoid.
Al
Interesting that you claim to already have removed the offending logos, John, because one of Von’s logos is still on display on your front page. For once, I’m grateful to be a struggling start-up, because it was easy to check and make sure none of my work is for sale on your site.
Mr. Williams,
Would any of this had ever happened had you been called on the carpet? Are you repenting and apologizing NOW because you got caught, OR because you yourself discovered that the stolen work of your peers is/was being sold on your website for substantially reduced, black-market prices? If you’re so up-to-snuff with the Brand Identity and Logo Designing Industry, HOW MANY stolen images of your peers needed to appear on your website before YOU recognized it as the work of someone else; and before YOU decided to make a public statement? Ten, fifty, a hundred logos? How many John? Two hundred, three hundred logos? How many? I just find it inconceivable that you can run a website with such a large database of “clip-art”, and NOT RECOGNIZE that many of the images already exist in the marketplace, and are CLEAR EXAMPLES of copyright infringement. Are you BLIND man, or are you just playing stupid to cover your backside? Had you come out of your own accord PUBLICLY FIRST and issued an apology due to a personal, internal investigation of your own policies regarding the gather of so-called “clip-art” for LogoGarden.com, I might believe you. But under the current circumstances I find your ethics questionable. And you should have NO PROBLEM understanding the anger and frustration now being blasted your way for such business incompetence.
Jeff
Seriously Mr. Williams, you have taken commenting off your facebook page and deleted some of our comments…luckily you still only have 31 people who like your page hahaha.
As for being ‘victimised’, puh-lease! You have made money from other people’s hard work. Are you compensating them for their work as well as informing potential logo buyers on your site (and not just in the fine print) that the logos they buy may be being used by another company? Maybe if you did that, we could believe that you are sincere.
Hey Von, I think that many, if not most of the testimonial statements by “happy” customers are bogus.
While looking at the “testimonials” on the LogoGarden website, something struck me as being a little odd – all the photos of the customers are reasonably well shot and some have the look of stock photos – for instance, a shot of a person on the phone. Photos sent in by $75 logo clients are not always going to be good photos, especially when converted to black and white. Also, not everyone will send in photos with their testimonials. There aren’t many photos of “unattractive” people, either.
So I did searches for some of the happy customers. I googled a more than a dozen of them, finding no websites for any of them. The web addresses that you can decipher on the unreadable (intentionally?) business card examples end up at “web address not found” or totally unrelated webpages. Not even for technology companies who would definitely need websites to be in business. From the looks of things, this is a case of false advertising, on top of the copyright infringement.
Glenn,
Yeah you’re correct the so-called “Happy Customers” are stolen avatar images from somewhere with snippets of mythic kudos shown to add that authentic flair to them. Everything is fake, including John Williams 15 years of being a branding specialist too.
If the clown put all this energy he uses to steal into actual hard work he might be successful at something else. He certainly has no clue when it comes to design.
Von
@ Glenn and Von,
Great observation on the so-called “testimonials” issue guys. In Mr. Williams case, such exaggerations seem par for the course – using images of people who aren’t genuine clients, to endorse and sell work which genuinely isn’t his. Yeah, great John, perfect, that’s just great …
Jeff
Mr. Williams,
I am sorry, but you and your own company’s conduct over this whole situation has been suspect from the beginning. Of course, I don’t especially like nor agree with your business model, but that is a whole other issue altogether.
The point is your business ethics and your conduct – most notably your actions (or lack of action as it were). Your website is suspect and evasively worded. Your customers testimonials appear contrived. Your reactions are canned. Your credentials, of all things are highly questionable.
Had you REALLY been an experienced creative or designer as you claim, you might understand why the design community is reacting as it is over your egregious abuses of copyright.
This is not an overly spiteful reaction to one or two logos being highly inspired. This is about widespread copyright infringement of easily hundreds of logo designs by very hard-working designers, design firms and their clients. And, I might add your rather flippant reaction to it all.
Had you really cared about making good with the design community, you would have responded immediately – not waiting for Facebook comments, blog articles and other outraged responses to appear throughout the internet.
No, there was no reply from you at all.
When you did decide to respond, it was with a canned letter blaming someone else for your unfortunate misstep. How convenient.
No, you’re not one of us. You’re not doing lots of sketches, working late hours and helping your clients. You’re not enjoying the accomplishment of satisfying craftsmanship. You’re another one of those people trying to make a buck off of others. How novel.
So, when you try and say that you are ‘getting to the bottom of this situation’, I can’t say that I or any of the design community believe you (if you really exist).
You’re just apologizing, because you got caught. Even that’s not original.
John,
I realize some have questioned whether or not you should be allowed to operate your business, I for one don’t care about that. You have every right too, but I have every right to point out the hinky model and ethics you drive it with. The fact of the matter is you have every right to run a legal business like this but what I take issue with is you stealing in order to facilitate it. Be that via omission or co-mission.
I’d be glad to debate you all day long regarding the problematic nature of your business model and how it exploits and hurts our industry but I’m a realist and know you’re not the first nor will you be the last to do this. Every industry has the good, the bad, and the ugly. You’ve just managed to cover two of those categories in spades, you’re not just bad you’re horrible at design and you’re not just ugly, you’re butt ugly on all levels be it business and aesthetics.
But no worries, you’re on our collective radar screens now. We’ll be hawking every move you make and when you step out of line I’m sure one of us will notice it and we’ll be glad to point it out again.
[...] LogoGate 2011; by Von Glitschka, Drawsigner [08.26.11] Advertisement LD_AddCustomAttr("AdOpt", "1"); [...]
I don’t think Mr. Williams of LogoGarden.com is the least bit sorry for the stealing, and selling, of design work created by professional designers. I sense he’s just sorry that his company got caught doing so.
Rather than reporting my 20-ish ripped off images directly to LogoGarden, I reported my findings to their web host Rackspace, so there would be a documented record of the situation. I’m just disappointed that Rackspace didn’t take the offending site down – which has been the result of my reporting of similar thievery to web hosts of sites having displayed my stolen work in the past.
Six of my ripped-off logo designs were featured with the accompanying faux testimonials. I’m pleased that online searches have shown that the businesses do not exist. I would not have wanted to contact those featured individuals with the news that their new [and poorly executed] business identity involved copyright infringement. It’s interesting that Mr. WIlliams, implies that his business model has ‘integrity’ at all – especially with page after page of fake testimonials.
J.
Great Article, Von! Several years ago I heard about the “poor man’s copyright” method of taking work and mailing it to yourself with dates of creation, communication, etc. included and keeping the envelope sealed and filed? In instances like this, would that work or hold up in court?
Great blog post, Von.
I don’t know what was more sickening; the conscience harvesting/stealing of designs for resale, the fabricated testimonials and sample icon usage or their disgusting response to remove the pirated work, yet keep the site intact.
From Johnny Williams’ email to us “Given the library’s size, although we do our best to ensure originality of our artwork, we can’t catch everything. And while sometimes a design conflict may be obvious, other times it’s a judgment call. We do our best.” Umm, okay. How about that promotional video of an illustrated crane “lifting” icons and marks from all over the globe.
Mr. Williams is about as real as the gallery of testimonial clients on his site. Sadly, we’ll have to monitor the site periodically, because I wouldn’t put it past him to repopulate his library with more ill-gotten gains.
Von, you’re awesome. Every bit of this was simply awesome.
Very good, passionate write-up Von. I can completely understand your rage and anger having taken a Design Weasel… or just Weasel… to court 10+ years ago over infringement of copyright regarding a logo I designed. Oh the joy of sitting in a county court room headed by an old Major who barked at me after 30 futile minutes “But Mr van der Walle… I just don’t see what your claim is!”. My response of “Erm… page 1?” was met with another bark of “Oh. I hadn’t read that.” I could have cried with utter frustration at the process.
Sadly if you have no scruples, you can take law abiding people through the mill in the court process. But it was the great off-the-record advice of a local lawyer who told me “You can do this to regain the costs you will incur… and still end up out of pocket. Or you can do it to piss the law breaker off.” I took the latter approach and the whole process seemed much more enjoyable thereafter.
Eventually won, but only thanks to much perseverance and being routed to a more specialist higher court where the final judge took one look and said “It’s obvious that infringement took place. As the accused hasn’t bothered to attend again, I’ll add some additional costs for you to claim back.”
Never got the money but managed to put the Weasel out of business. Wouldn’t want to do it again, but it was sure satisfying to know that he (temporarily) couldn’t do the same to others!
Moral of the story? Too many people don’t have morals, and they’re not worth the time of day. Posts such as these should ensure that their reputation is rightfully damaged beyond viable repair. Therefore I wish this post well
[...] week, he exposed Logogarden’s LogoGate in a fascinating and well documented article which I urge you to check out. You won’t believe [...]
@Justin – no, the poor man’s copyright won’t hold up in court because and good lawyer could argue that you opened and resealed the envelope. Short of registering with the USCO, your best recourse is to document your creative process and have a trustworthy third party witness your progress and the dates of creation. That’s why we created http://myows.com (PS: Logo by Von himself!)
[...] take a minute to read this blog post by Von regarding copyright infringement by these large cookie-cutter logo factories. Very [...]
Awesome article. I’d like to step on Mr. Williams’ bones. Oh sorry, hope that wasn’t offensive.
Hey, not all of your work has been removed. The second one you note above is still there, not sure how many others. Love the article and very much appreciate the info about protecting ourselves when we can!
[...] New LogoGarden.com harvests logos from pros, on LogoMotives How logo can they go? on LogoLounge LogoGate 2011, on [...]
[...] suppose on some level this means a bumper crop soon awaits picking by logo harvester John Williams I suppose? But I [...]
Aw, this became a really good post. Hypothetically I would like to write this way too – slacking and real effort to have a good article… but what things can I believe that… I procrastinate alot and don’t manage to get anything done
[...] so often a situation dusts up in the design community and creatives start collectively kicking the proverbial hornets nest. The latest buzz in our [...]
[...] New LogoGarden.com harvests logos from pros, on LogoMotives How logo can they go? on LogoLounge LogoGate 2011, on [...]
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[...] across our industry were graphically victimized by a new breed of design pariah by the name of John Williams. In a nutshell he ripped off hundreds of logo designs and began selling them through his site called [...]
[...] WWF’s panda logo, yours for $69 How low can they go? Love Thy Logo LogoGate 2011 [...]
[...] WWF’s panda logo, yours for $69 How low can they go? Love Thy Logo LogoGate 2011 [...]
[...] LogoGate 2011 [...]
I have a question to Von (stumbled this via Twitter). If you have to pay $50 to copy right a logo, why don’t you bill this to your client? I mean, technically it is both you and your client being affected by this.
Marco, it depends on the design. Some times a concept isn’t used by a client but designers still display it on their site. In which case there is no one to bill. If it’s a clients logo than I inform them of the infringement and let them handle it. I never register anything that is owned by a client that’s up to them to do.
I have both types shown within the designs documented in this post. And frankly I don’t register ever design I work on it’s just not practical to do that.
I wonder if Matt Earnshaw works for these douchebags?
[...] nie tuczy? może, ale 2 mln zielonych, to niezły wynik, nietuczący. Więcej o złodziejskim procederze LogoGarden. Szymon Salinski dodał jeszcze jedną informację o Logo [...]