UPDATED: Sports Logo Theft

UPDATE: Updated logo and response from the team at the end of this story

Logo theft is a big problem. All you have to do is type in “logo theft” in a Google search and you can see an epidemic of design thievery going on and it needs to stop. Lights need to shine on these people. But since this a sports specific blog, I’ll stay on topic.

I was surfing the forums over on SportsLogos.net, which I always do, and found this thread on logo theft. The thread title was “possible theft”, but this is 100%, absolute theft.

Take a look at this Arkansas Diamonds logo.

Other than the logo looking like total garbage, there’s not much to discuss, right? Well, wait a minute… Check out this Golden Baseball League’s Mesa Miners logo, designed by the great Studio Simon. The miner’s head looks familiar, doesn’t it?

Now take a look at this University of Texas El Paso logo. The right arm of the Arkansas Diamonds used this UTEP logo as their model.

And, in case you need more visuals, I made this side by side comparison graphic of the three logos.

The Arkansas Diamonds decided it was better to rip some other designer(s) off, rather than pay someone with talent a fair fee for a professional logo. A lot of time, research and development goes into these logos and teams that think they can fly under the radar need to be called out.

Here is the Arkansas Diamonds’ official website, but there’s no contact form to get a comment from someone in the organization. I took it upon myself to leave a comment on their guestbook about the infraction. Let’s see if they respond. I’m not holding my breath.

The comments in the thread on SportsLogos.net are interesting to say the least.

I love this one by rams80:
“Just because you’re a cheapskate fly-by-night bush league organization doesn’t mean copyright law doesn’t apply to you.”

On the flip-side, you have this idiot (microdragon):
“you american are so naif, look at the rest of the world, many soccer team have their logo copied, and they dont have to face any lawsuits, for this i considered your complaints Stupid”

The problem is that there are more and more people that think like microdragon. Like it’s ok to “borrow” pieces of someone else’s work, mash them together, and try to pass it off as your own.

This is not the first time this has happened and won’t be the last. But if we can shine a light on these logo thieves, maybe it happens a little less.

I’m curious how Studio Simon is gonna handle this and I’ll try to keep on top of it and report back here.

If you have other examples of sports logo theft, shoot me an e-mail or post some links in the comments section.

UPDATE:

Once I heard about this logo theft on SportsLogos.net forum, I went to the Diamonds’ team site and tried to contact them about the theft. Unfortunately, there was no contact email to get a response about the claim and proof of theft.

So, I posted a message to the team’s website guestbook and contacted hometeamsonline.com, which hosts the Diamonds’ website and other collection of team sites.

Today I got an email from Jim Smith, who, I assume, is part of the Arizona Diamonds organization:

The logo was done by an employee from art sites and places on the web. We knew nothing about Mesa or anyone else. (he has been fired)However, we’ve done a new logo purchased from clipart and attached.

Here’s their new logo. It’s still terrible, but at least they took care of the copyright infringement.