LogoMaid: Brazen Logo Theft
Trouble is brewing on the internet: the hard work of web designers is being brashly stolen by one logo company, LogoMaid. It all started a few days ago when Dan Cederholm of SimpleBits noticed that LogoMaid had ripped off his new logo and was selling it on their site. The controversy continued as other logo thefts were discovered: one of Panic's, one of Godbit's, and two of Apple's. Each logo was tweaked slightly (perhaps dropped into Illustrator or Photoshop and traced) and resold on LogoMaid's site for around $199.
Sadly this isn't anything new. Good logos and even entire site designs are often ripped off and even resold as if the thief created it. What's different this time is that the criminals at LogoMaid aren't apologizing and fading back into the woodwork, but rather threatening to sue the victims, absurdly claiming that the original designers stole the logo from them! In one Flickr thread, Peter Olexa and possibly others at LogoMaid created throw-away Flickr profiles just to support their illogical argument.
I don't know about you but that just makes me mad. So I'm writing this post as part of a campaign to spread the word about LogoMaid. Taking it to court wouldn't really be worth it for the bloggers (though I wouldn't be surprised if Apple Legal started making some calls), so we'll do what we can to help potential customers realize their money shouldn't go to LogoMaid. Can you imagine if you spent $200 of your hard-earned money to find out the logo you bought was stolen? And sadly this is probably the only way that the morally reprehensible folks behind LogoMaid will listen.
There's a lot of better posts out there about this, so I suggest you take a minute to read Nathan's post at Sonspring (he designed Godbit's logo), as well as the links below for more of the scoop. And if you have a blog and feel as incensed as I do about these thefts, please join the campaign. (Just be sure to add 'rel="nofollow"' to any links to LogoMaid's site).
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In Between is the blog of Dave Lowe, a web designer and developer in the Orange County (Southern California) area.
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