The digital domain of Rick Curran
The recent SimpleBits LogoMaid logo debacle made me imagine what kind of blog template ripoffs might be out there so I started to make a few just for fun!
If I was on the ball then this would have made a good opportunity for an April fools gag but unfortunately I didn’t think about it until later on!
I hope Dan Benjamin and John Gruber don’t mind me using their sites for this little bit of fun!
~Rick
There’s been a bit of a storm going on recently on the net due to the disregard for intellectual property shown by various companies. First there was the ripping off of both the Joyent website and Corkd (see Dan Benjamin’s Flickr picture for the resulting hybrid ripoff!), now there is a big stir about LogoMaid and their use of several well known logos amongst some of their logos for sale.
The main stir at the moment relates to Dan Cederholm’s SimpleBits logo and this one by LogoMaid:
In an ongoing Flickr discussion thread LogoMaid insist that they’ve done nothing wrong (they even hinted that they’d consider suing Dan Cederholm for his use of his logo!), overall it’s pretty crazy.
Here’s a few other dubious examples from LogoMaid’s catalogue:
I agree with the sentiment of the article I just mentioned, so I’ve written this post to help raise some attention to this kind of abuse of ideas and images. If you’re planning on purchasing logos from somewhere like LogoMaid then it’s worth being wary. LogoMaid claim “Over 3600 unique and non-unique logos to choose from”, the problem is some of those logos truly are “non-unique” and were created by someone else. You may find that you get an unexpected surprise when the rightful creator of your new logo takes action to protect their creation from being abused.
Caveat emptor
~Rick
