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.

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.

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.

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?