Wednesday, 20 March 2019

A company in Lebanon stole a logo I designed in 2012 for a One Show competition and is making money off of my design and I'm looking for advice on what I should do.

So about a month ago, I got a message on Instagram from a woman asking if I designed this logo. I told her that I did back in 2012 for The One Show Competition and then she messages me back and tells me, "Well, it's been stolen and someone has made a brand using it." She then sends me the link to the Instagram account promise.lb. It's a company in Lebanon that I would never have found without this awesome Instagram stranger. She told me that she messaged them about the logo and asked why they stole it and she said that they told her they owned it and they created it.

Obviously, they stole the mark and added a line to each palm of the hands. It's literally on everything that they sell too. From jewelry to clothing to wallets. There are some instances where they just straight up used my logo design without the palm lines. The funniest part is in their bio where it says: N.B: legal measurments will be taken on any copy attempt. So I messaged them directly on Instagram and told them that they needed to stop using the logo because I designed it. They responded with "it wasn't trademarked and we got it trademarked and we changed it enough so it's 100% legal" before I could screenshot the conversation I was blocked and now I can't access the messages from them.

I'm trying to decide what I should do next. Do I hire a lawyer and get into a lengthy, expensive international legal battle? Do I just ignore it? I talked to my boss at work and he told me that there probably isn't much that could be done given the logo isn't for a business I own and the fact that they're in Lebanon. I also talked to a couple of the team members I worked on this project with and one of them emailed The One Show but hasn't heard back. So naturally, I now turn to Reddit.

TLDR: Title... A company in Lebanon stole a logo I designed in 2012 for a One Show competition and is making money off of my design on all kinds of merchandise and I'm looking for advice on what I should do.



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