I had been reading a lot about how designer in design contest sites rip off designs and post them as concepts. Today, we realized Logo Design Works has also become a victim of this issue.
We had created a crab based logo design for a company back in 2005 for a client, Cajun Crab Restaurant. It was a fairly illustrative design and the client was quite happy with it. Here is original logo. You can see it in our mascot design portfolio.
Today we found that a design had ripped the Cajun Crab design from our site, modified it slightly and posted it as a concept on the 99Designs contest site.
I find this quite agitating. We have sent off a notice to 99Designs website. Hopefully they will bring the designs down and reprimand the designer. If that does not happen we plan to inform the client (who actually owns a trademark for this logo design) and pass it to our legal counsel.
This is disgraceful. Wanna be designers trolling design sites, ripping off designs and trying to pass them off as their own. Actually I would blame the design contest sites since they are catalysts in promoting such a culture.
@Brad : Thank you for comment and for digging this story.
@George: Absolutely! It is disgraceful!