Following up on the LogoGarden.com fiasco. We emailed the complete list of our stolen logos to service@logogarden.com two days ago. Today we received an email from John Williams himself with the following statement:

First, I appreciate you bringing this to my attention. To build our vast symbol library, LogoGarden.com contracts with designers nationwide and from around the world. Many of the symbols in question came from a small number of these designers. If any of these symbols do indeed violate copyright laws, our policy is to extract them from our online symbol library immediately and to terminate contracts with the designers who submitted them. As a business practice, all the designers we contracted with signed a “work for hire” contract that guaranteed their work would be original.

Given the library’s size, although we do our best to ensure originality of our artwork, we can’t catch everything. And while sometimes a design conflict may be obvious, other times it’s a judgment call. We do our best.

We ourselves have issues with our logo symbols being copied, so we appreciate your concern and vigilance. In the future, if you find any symbols that you feel violate artwork you’ve designed and copyrighted personally, let us know.

Thanks for your understanding,
John Williams,
President, LogoGarden.com

Has anyone else received a response from these guys? Sounds like it’s a form email they’re firing off to everyone that contacts them. We emailed him back asking him to remove all the logos in question from the LogoGarden.com, LogoGarden.ca and LogoGarden.co.uk sites immediately.

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We received a tip from a few designers yesterday that Rackspace, the site host for LogoGarden.com, has a copyright form on their site to request removal of any copyrighted material from the LogoGarden site. I’m pleased to report that this has been an effective course of action and Rackspace has quickly responded to the matter.

We recommend that all designers affected use the following link to fill out their Copyright Notice:

http://www.rackspace.com/information/legal/copyrightnoticessl.php

We filled out the form yesterday detailing the full list of the (28) logos of ours we found on the LogoGarden site. I personally combed through the site first thing this morning and only (4) of the (28) remained.

I also received an email this AM from a Rackspace CSR saying they contacted LogoGarden and LogoGarden had notified them that the material in question was removed. Rackspace’s email ended with the following statement:

“Please review the site in question to make a determination of compliance. If there are any outstanding issues with this matter please let me know so that I can take the necessary action to resolve this matter. Please contact us within the next 14 days. If we do not hear from you by August 31, 2011 we will consider this matter resolved. Thank you.”

So, bottom line, this route seems to be the quickest and most effective way to get your stolen logos removed from the site. Rackspace has the ability to put some immediate pressure on them.

I urge all designers to contact Rackspace as soon as possible. It seems to be working.
I’m following up with Rackspace right now concerning our few remaining logos.

For everyone following what I’ve now seen referred to as “LogoGarden Gate,” here’s a full list of the logos stolen from the Prejean Creative vault, a total of 28 marks. These include work for a variety of clients, from local/regional entities to major corporations like Motorola and Simon & Schuster.

We are professional designers. We take this issue very seriously, not only as a matter of pride in our work and protection of intellectual property, but on behalf of the clients and brands who have trusted us as a marketing partner. Legal cease & desist demands are expected to go to LogoGarden from several quarters. But LogoGarden is only the most brazen of this type of “logos to go” business model. Helping organizations see the value of a true marketing partner, who helps them build their brands long-term is key to fighting the LogoGardens of the world. More on that to come.

It seems that on the Internet you can run, but you can’t hide. If you’re up to no good, or trying to play the system somebody will always find you. And someone will always rat you out.

One of my fellow coworkers, Brent Pelloquin, came across this little gem of a blog post from Steve Douglas of The Logo Factory entitled “The Perils of Do-It-Yourself Logo Makers.” Go ahead, read it. I’ll wait.

Here’s the gist — there is a firm, website or whatever called the LogoGarden which is, and I quote: “…poised to disrupt online logo design and biz card space” with their DIY logo maker thingy. If by disrupt they mean steal, pilfer, pillage and plunder copyrighted material, and intellectual property that was paid for by other businesses; then yes.

This site is essentially a clearing house for pirated or stolen material slightly modified to “fit” the needs of the potential customer. We’ve already monitored some online chatter from other design firms and agencies noting that their work is appearing on the site for illegal resale. More than a few of our firm’s identity work appear on this site as well.

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