I guess you could say my passion is the design of logos. Has been for decades – when I’m not working on a new logo, I’m thinking about a logo. If I get bored with designing or working with logos I tend to write about them. A lot. Little featurettes like Some (almost) Golden Rules of Logo Design, a bit that’s been in our library for a few years now. There was even a version of Golden Rules that was syndicated for publication, but it’s different than the one in our library, and publication of that version requires a credit.
Well, you can imagine my surprise when my library article turns up on another logo website – some Utah(?) based cats going by the name of Logo Design Xperts – in all its glory. Claiming to be the ‘world’s trusted design service’, this lot failed to notice that the original critiqued our own logo, according to the rules I’d listed, and that I referred to the design in the feature using our company acronym – TLF. As in The. Logo. Factory. An acronym which they have left in the version they published on their website. Not sure how we can shoe horn Logo Design Xperts into TLF, but no mind. Just got off the phone with the nice gentleman who answered their toll-free (also the number for some online ‘University’ where you can – crikey – get a Bachelor, Masters or Doctorate degree in six days for a couple of hundred bucks) and (quell surprise) he had no idea how this would have happened, telling me that he would have to talk to his ‘webmaster’. I’m thinking something along the lines of copy. Paste.
It’s not just the gall of pinching someone’s material without so much as a credit (sometimes it’s almost flattering), it never ceases to amaze me when people claiming to be logo design companies seem to have little idea about copyright, intellectual property rights and other pesky concepts that are supposed to hinder folks from using other people’s stuff.
Probably should have added a ‘ no pinchy’ clause to the Golden Rules.
Update: Oh, these cats are too much. A buddy just pointed out that their Secrets of An Efficient Design Process article is a complete knock-off from our Choosing a Graphic Designer piece. All in the name of scoring well in logo design search engine queries.
Bad designers. No donut.
Update 2: After a few more e-mails and phone calls, a credit link has been added to the articles, so everything’s honky-dory once more. Here’s the lesson – if you want to republish any features from our website or blog, ask first, kay?
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According to the page that they published your article on the source of the article is expertslogodesign.com (a PR 1 site I’ve never heard of claiming to receive 3000 uniques a day) which has privacy on the domain name so you can’t tell if they’re owned by the same company – wouldn’t be surprised at all if they were.
You know that your assumptions may be wrong so it is recommended to dont name your competitors in your articles especially with negative thoughts. They can take legal action against you . Healthy competitons always be appreciated on net so remove this slum from your decent site. I think you have to appreciate them they are using your article with your source.
Thanks for your concern Jony, My assumptions aren’t wrong. In fact, they’re not even assumptions. The article above was accurate when it was posted back in October of last year. It wasn’t until late January, and after much effort, that I allowed the company named to keep the articles on their site, as long as they credited my company with a link. Any duplicate content damage had already been done, and a credit link was better than nothing.
Previous to that, requests to remove the articles, by phone and e-mail, were ignored. And speaking about assumptions, simply posting a credit link on someone else’s material doesn’t necessarily give you permission to use said material. Nor does everyone ‘appreciate’ seeing their stuff show up on someone else’s site, link credit or not. I happen to be one of these people. See, it’s all about permission. Which everyone should get before publishing anyone else’s material. Which is sort of the point of the article you’re commenting on.
And if someone who used a competitor’s material without permission, wants to take ‘legal action’ against that author for writing about it before any link was added or permission granted, they’re more than welcome to do so. In fact, anyone can sue anyone else for anything. It’s being successful that’s the challenge. See, I’ve been laboring under the impression that lack of accuracy was the benchmark for any successful lawsuit, but perhaps you’re aware of a wrinkle that makes that premise moot.
On the other hand, if anyone takes other people’s material without permission, don’t be surprised if the people that own that material write about it, and rather than threatening legal action in a comment section, mea culpa’s are usually more effective from a PR standpoint. See, making legal threats in the comment section of a blog usually ends up with the cat making them looking like a tool.
If you are so much confident then we will recommend them to take legal action against you as this is our business to safeguard the image of the companies on net.
“Safeguard the image of companies on the net” you say. That sounds awfully important. So what company do you represent again? At the moment, all I’ve got is someone sorta claiming to be a lawyer, using a Gmail addy, a broken link in his comment, posting from an IP# in Karachi, Pakistan, threatening to sue people in the comment section of my silly little blog.