The Sun:
The largely unknown company claims to have issued a cease and desist letter to Apple, asking the company to stop “infringing on our intellectual property” with the Shortcuts logo.
And:
A Shift spokesperson said: “It’s mind-blowing that Apple, the firm with the biggest cash pile in history, the firm that is so design oriented, had to copy our logo.”
First things first, follow the link and look at the two logos side-by-side. Judge for yourself.
I do see a strong resemblance, can’t imagine a universe where someone at Apple copied the logo. Cash grab? Fair demand?
Maybe they can use their $200k proceeds (I actually don’t think they will win) to get a better domain (shiftnrg.org) by buying shift.com. Or maybe they will sue shift.com too! 😉
There’s definitely a resemblance, but then again, both logos are so generic looking I bet I could find a ton of other logos that could be confused with them. If I was Apple, I’d redesign that logo anyway.
Too similar.
I guess it’s all subjective, but I would never confuse the two. Shift looks like an intersection of two squares in 2d. Shortcuts looks like two rounded squares layered in an orthographic view. They happen to use a similar color pallet, which means nothing.
Not to mention, their brandname is generic as hell. I can’t find their app or their company, but I do get results for a bunch of other companies. If they don’t come up in a google search, how established can they be?
Ridiculous. The Shortcut logo looks (if you squint a little) like an S. The Shift logo does not. I don’t think Apple “copied” it and I don’t think there’s any possible confusion. I don’t think Shift’s business would be harmed by a vaguely similar looking logo by Apple. I doubt even their lawyers think they have a case. If anything, this is a way of getting in the news.
Exactly, an attention grab and nothing more.
They are substantially similar, but this is still clearly an opportunity for a cash grab by Shift. If they actually cared about the logo, they would only be demanding Apple use a different one. By their own volition “”We are not necessarily trying to go after Apple. They can keep the logo if they reimburse us for a new one.” $200,000 to redesign a logo, absurd, cash grab.
Apple should just redesign the logo, it’s not like app icon for “Shortcuts” is something that anybody is really going to care about.
To me, it does not look similar at least. I mean, the shapes of it. One is smooth edge and other is square edge. The colors by shape and background almost look identical. Maybe.
Does anyone remembered Quark logo controversial? That was something…
Sue them back! Such ludicrous claims should be outlawed.
Cash grab.
Their IP can’t be “any two overlapping rectangles in purple and light blue”.
Especially with Apple’s version being so visually different; between the [no big deal] vertical flip of the colors, to the rounding and gradients, and the way the overlap is not “a flat gray diamond”, but an actual color blend?
The graphic designer in me says “at best vague inspiration” and nothing actionable.
Ridiculous claim. Back in the ’80s I had a new logo created for my firm. It was a blue square with the letters of the company name embossed in italic, bold, white, helvetica in the center.
About a year later I was contacted by another firm that used a similar design that predated mine. Both were copyrighted.
A suit followed that went to arbitration. My lawyers found several logos from across the country with a similar theme. The plaintiff lost as they could not show confusion in the marketplace.
I remember a similar design used by a national company that easily predated Shift’s and was similar but different. I seriously doubt Shift will be able to demonstrate confusion in the marketplace.
That’s not even close to the same! Wankers!
I worked for a company where a week or less before E3 we discovered that our company logo was similar to another company’s logo. No copying, we simply created something that was similar to ours and the trademark researchers didn’t find the similarity. We had 1 day to design a new logo since we had a booth at E3.
Do you really think Apple intentionally copied the logo?
The two overlapping squares to form a logo is one of the easiest and the most obvious execution you can do for an S logo. When designing a logo, it’s one of those throwaway, you just need to create one just to appease or find another angle or an idea to create a symbol of an S icon. I believe, Apple chose this design because it fits the overall look of the brand identity of iOS 12 (orthographic, blurred squircle, the color combination).
This is a hard one, I doubt Apple would intentionally do this, but the color choices are remarkable. The shapes, ok, that can happen, there is only so much you can do in a small square icon, especially if you abide by some fundamental guidelines for designing in a small square. But the colors? I guess the same argument is still valid, there are guidelines to using color as well…
It’s an exact clone. /s
I have the patents for every basic geometric shape. Pay up.
No. But they look similar enough to me to justify changing theirs. Not necessarily “confusion in the marketplace.”
I see, yes, I agree. Just wondering.
Exactly. Shift is clearly an intersection of 2 flat surfaces. Shortcuts is clearly an isometric view of iOS icons layered. Which follows the exact design pattern Apple has been using for many years for their “Kit” APIs in iOS, an isometric icon with multiple layers beneath it signaling depth. The color palette also closely follows the aesthetic Apple adopted for many years now.
Perhaps their graphic designers were inspired by Apple’s aesthetic in the first place? But its hard to argue that its a ripoff. They’re trying to argue that Shortcuts icon is similarly a 2D intersection forming a figure 8, which is not true to anyone who has any sense of perspective.
Kind of silly. But, any small company will try to sue Apple if they have any kind of argument whatsoever, simply as a cash grab.
Nah. And it’s not like there’s a great deal of creativity in either logo.