We live in a world where logos are everything. A well-designed graphic can make or break a brand, and as such, people get a little tetchy when other people’s logos start to look a little like their own. I remember when Apple started pulling the legal finger out at home-cooking business Prepear because they were also using a fruit-based logo, even though a pear and an apple are clearly different, and one of them even has a bit out of it on the logo.
Delta is the latest piece of tech to fall into the logo rights debacle, with photography giants Adobe saying that Riley Testut’s stylised image of the Greek letter ‘Delta’ is too much like the ‘A’ they use in their Adobe logo.
Ok, looking at the featured image in this article, I get that they looked similar… but they’re not the same in my eyes. One uses red branding, the other purple. One takes up the full space of the logo, one doesn’t. Even in the image below, the Adobe Express logo which uses a symbol that’s more of the same size as the Delta logo is more rounded, colourful, and uses a black background. I’m not sure whether I’m just being thick here, but I can tell that they’re different.
Still, in a recent chat with The Verge, Testut explained that Adobe’s lawyers reached out with a strong suggestion that the company chose another logo. The email wasn’t threatening (lawyers are too clever for that), but it simply stated that Delta probably might ‘not wish to confuse consumers or otherwise violate Adobe’s rights or the law.’
The letter might not have been threatening, but a day later Adobe spoke to Apple to claim that Delta was ‘infringing its intellectual property rights’. It’s funny that Delta has been around for all of these years without a problem, but as soon as it becomes a popular app, that’s when the issues start…
The team is working on a new logo as we speak, and the one that you’re seeing in the App Store now is just temporary (I dig it though, and wouldn’t be angry if it stayed!). I’m a huge fan of Riley listing why they’re having to change the logo in the App Store listing too – ‘Adobe threatened legal action unless we changed our app icon – so we did’ is probably the funniest reason I’ve seen for an update, and we’re all looking forward to seeing Delta logo change unveil soon. Let’s just hope it’s not a piece of fruit, or they could be in hot water again!
