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Comment by tptacek | Hacker News Reader

Strong disagree. That was a clever logo and one I hadn't seen before.

Whether or not you "strongly disagree" doesn't change the fact that it was created independently by other people as well, evidenced by the third comment in one of the links latitude posted (http://logopond.com/gallery/detail/165288) and in archived threads where multiple people came to the current design on 4chan's /gd/ that Daiz posted.

I'm not invested in this issue enough to argue about it. I look at a lot of systems like this and was struck by the novelty of the logo, is why I commented. Take that for whatever you think it's worth.

If you aren't invested, how can you open with "strong disagree."

Seems like you're invested up to the point when you're wrong, which is a pattern I've observed on this site in general.

Incidentally, your anecdotal "feelings" about whether something feels original or not make for a pretty weak argument.

If you extrapolate my comment into points I wasn't trying to make, I think you'll find those arguments very easy to tear down. If that's a productive exercise for you, be my guest.

I don't really see the straw man here, but my larger point wasn't about this particular argument at all. Just the fickle commitment to the discussion.

I strongly disagreed that the concept was't unique and original. I'm clarifying though, not trying to give you flak; like I said, I don't much care about this leg of the thread.

It's saddening that so much of the thread is spent dwelling on this issue. I'd love to hear your take on the actual crypto at play here, if you have time for a critique?

Why should people invest past the point of being wrong? If someone proves you wrong, you should change your mind, not keep arguing just to save face.

I like admitting that you are wrong instead of saying "meh I didn't actually care about this."

I like admitting you are wrong too.

haha you got me :)

As I said in the (edit) of the original comment, the originality is secondary to the timing.

When you finalize a logo, you typically run a quick due diligence (a Google search) to see if you reinvented a wheel. If you did, you scrape it and start afresh. Tox didn't do that and they should've.

Except, you run that check to make sure your not running afoul of someone's trademark restrictions/ using a logo associated with an existing brand. (Which, unless I am missing something here, they are not.). They should have run it, but just because they found your result doesn't mean they had to scrap something they (allegedly) did themselves.

If they came up with it independently(a very legitimate question given the similarity of the --- very nice by the way --- logo, but one they seem to have evidence for) then there seems to be no moral problem or even a legal issue.

You're basically claiming "I thought of it first, there for it's mine" which is both legally wrong in the US for copyright(independent creation is a defense) and morally bullshit in the same way that Amazon's one click ordering patent is.

> Your basically claiming

I am not claiming this, this is how things work in the logo design industry. There are of course copyrights, trademarks and legal matters, but there are also professional ethics. Ideas and concepts are getting recreated all the time, that's life. But it's also why people post sketches and ask if anyone has seen anything similar, only to discard them and move to another concept.

You don't actually seem to be using the logo anywhere, though. On your site you write that "I had (have) plans to write an Instant Messenger client with proper support for privacy. This was the logo concept for the project"[1], but this project does not actually seem to exist (at least not in any public manner).

As such, why not just leave the logo of Tox in peace? Especially since it's a FOSS project with noble goals (even if they have yet to reach those goals, which is not surprising considering how early in the development the entire project is) and not some commercial entity intending to profit off of it.

[1] http://swapped.cc/#!/logotypes

> As such, why not just leave the logo of Tox in peace?

I have plans for it. It wasn't just an idle doodle.

And I'm quite sure that the logo's in the link below are intended to be used or are IN use. So, tell me, why are these companies with many highly experienced legal advisers not fighting eachother over a logo?

http://img.ctrlv.in/img/51f6b5b849ebf.jpg

You can trademark using a round M for burgers, but that doesn't get you the trademark for banks. Witness Apple Records and Apple Computers.

In this case, the products/ideas are straight-up competitors.

Only Apple go so far as to take such petty things to court. Most of their law suits can be generalised as "It looks similar from this side of the room"

I think I'm safe in assuming when you say "Only Apple" you mean Apple Computers. However, it was actually Apple Records who sued Apple Computers, not the other way around.

Yeah, I get the two confused all the time.

Oh wait

A pre-binary of an existing project and an idea that you had that you've conveniently been sitting on for a year are very different things.

This isn't competition. It's complaining on a professional level.

Many people make plans, few carry them out. You posted that March 21, 2012. Now, 1 year and 4 months later, someone apparently independently created a similar logo and is actually doing something with it, not just planning to do so. If you do something with it as well then great! I don't see what the big deal is.

Using your logic, we can conclude that no one should be able to use the wheel, because at some point in the past someone else invented it?

People invented calculus independently at the same time.

That was before the internet.

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