9Rules vs. Toyota

By Jonathan Bailey • Oct 16th, 2006 • Category: Articles, Legal Issues, News

In what has to be one of the most odd cases of accused plagiarism I’ve seen, 9Rules, the well-respected blog network, has accused a design firm working for Toyota of plagiarizing their logo.

The Toyota logo, which was used for a women’s conference presented by the company, does bear an uncanny resemblance to the famous 9rules leaf. In fact, according the Mike Rundle, three random coordinate points line up perfectly on the two logos.

When confronted with the similarities by the 9rules staff, the firm in question denied all wrongdoing.

Not waiting for an admission of guilt, Rundle, who is also the copyright holder of the logo, decided to have a little fun with it and hold a contest to mashup the Toyota logo.

This contest has already produced some very interesting and amusing mashups of the Toyota logo, many of which are posted in the comments to the contest invitation.

Though the contest is all for fun, games and a $25 gift card, it does raise some serious questions. The most important of those questions is how will Toyota react to the use of the trademarked (and copyright protected) logo in such a fashion, especially considering no Toyota employees were responsible for the alleged misuse? Though the 9rules logo is not trademarked, the Toyota one is and that grants it extra rights, especially if there’s possibility of confusion that it is endorsed by Toyota.

Personally, I find it unlikely that Toyota will take any action against Rundle or any of the entrants, but it wouldn’t be the biggest shock in recent memory if they did. Recent actions of the RIAA and MPAA remind us that bad IP decisions are becoming much more frequent.

However, the incident itself raises some much more difficult questions, the most important of which is the role logos play in an intellectual property strategy. They are not necessarily the reason people visit a site, but are crucial to a site’s identity and its ability to make a reputation for itself. Though protected by copyright law, they are often better protected by trademarking, something very few Web sites do.

Without a doubt, this story is developing and I will update this site as it develops.

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Short URL to this Post: http://copybyte.com/z/10e

Jonathan Bailey is The Webmaster and author of Plagiarism Today, which he founded in 2005 as a way to help Webmasters going through content theft problems get accurate information and stay up to date on the rapidly-changing field. He is also a consultant to Webmasters and companies to help them devise practical content protection strategies and develop good copyright policies.
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  • My opinion...

    Much a do about nothing, a leaf is a leaf. I don't copy things, but honestly I have little patience for leagl mumbo jumbo. Regarding plaigerism in general I would suggest that when someone puts something on the internet, they should assume that it will be copied or at least linked to. That's what the internet is for. If you don't want someone to use or copy something, don't put it on the internet.

    -Dennis
  • Hey Vincent, I probably wouldn't publish entries that are overly offensive (racist, derogatory, etc.) but none were submitted that were more than just having some fun.

    On another note, just a few days ago Toyota pulled the logo from the website, so I think that shows the power that blogs have!
  • Viccent,

    I agree completely. I really don't foresee any problems but I must be getting cynical in my old age. It seems that nothing would be able to shock me.

    Still, it would be interesting to see how the story would be picked up if Toyota did react...
  • I would think Toyota are loving the contest! It's a whole lot of free advertising for their logo and I can't see how it could do them any harm unless someone did a logo in extremely poor taste. Is Mike reviewing entries before they appear?

    Imagine the bad press they would get if they tried to shut the contest down!
  • Mike,

    I definitely agree that it is highly unlikely that they will try anything. But there are a lot of bad ideas out there in the world of IP law and I've hit the point where nothing surprises me. In a sane world you should be safe, too bad the inmates are running the asylum.

    I am interested to hear how things go though. Please do keep me informed and I will continue to check up!

    Thanks for stopping by!
  • Thanks for covering the story, I'll definitely keep you guys in the loop.

    The mashup contest was just done in fun -- one of the only ways a young designer like me has "pull" is in traffic and influence through my blog, so I thought having a tongue-in-cheek contest to mashup the Toyota logo would get people talking. I doubt that anyone at Toyota corporate would do anything since parody of a copyrighted/trademarked logo is covered under fair use, but we'll see. Every day people take company logos and drop them on donkeys or change them in funny ways for blog postings, so this is really no different.

    Because Toyota and 9rules (or Meridian Communications and 9rules) are in completely different industries, a Trademark case would be very difficult. My work is normally ripped off once or twice a month by various means, but this is by far the most blatant infringement of my work I've ever come across, and because of that I'm definitely weighing my options.
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