11 Feb Buying your Own Logo – At Least it was Cheap

After our November article on designer Sacha Greif’s investigation of Fiverr, we were contacted with an unbelievable story. Apparently The Logo Factory, a logo design and branding shop, had their logo ripped off on Fiverr not once, but three times.

At the end of last October, The Logo Factory founder Steve Douglas discovered an old version of the company logo on Fiverr. Knowing Fiverr’s notorious reputation for non-responsiveness when it comes to infringement complaints, Douglas contacted the designer directly. To his relief, the logo was removed immediately. However, a few days later, Douglas was notified by Jeff Fisher of Logomotivesthat the current The Logo Factory logo – in all its 3D glory, and including the “founded in 1996” tagline – was appearing in another Fiverr designer’s portfolio. Since their logo is a well-recognized, trademarked asset, Douglas couldn’t ignore the infringement.

The difficulty, as always, was in getting Fiverr to respond to the notice of infringement. Appeals via their social media accounts went unanswered, and Douglas knew from experience that the only way to reach Fiverr directly is to open an account – an onerous undertaking exacerbated by the amount of SPAM the site sends to registered users. Instead, he decided to purchase his own logo directly from the designer. The experience made all the more surreal by the designer’s insistence that the logo was an original. The “final” artwork was delivered speckled with a  “free trial” watermark, obviously generated by some trial version of software the Fiverr designer had used to cull the logo. The designer messaged Douglas to say he was removing the logo from his portfolio. Since this had been Douglas’ goal all along, he was more or less happy with the result.

Unfortunately the story doesn’t end there. Ten days later, Douglas got another notice from Jeff Fisher: yet another Fiverr designer was showcasing the old The Logo Factory logo. As Douglas wrote, “Whack a mole indeed.”

You can read Douglas’ full story on The Logo Factory blog.

At top of page: the pixelated, watermarked logo, delivered by the Fiverr designer. Worth every cent of $5?