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Logo similarity:

https://www.automationanywhere.com/

They've had this re-design at least since March (based on their Facebook page).




That is nearly identical. Would anyone with legal experience like to chime in about trademarks or something? I don't have much knowledge of it.


Not a lawyer, but I do have a long-standing interest in trademark law and know a good deal about it.

Courts look at the potential for confusion, which is often avoided if the two companies are in completely different markets, eg Apple Computer complaining about a store that specializes in apple pie and uses the word 'apple' in their business name. Trademark owners essentially have to make a showing of defending their mark or risk being accused of abandonment by someone else who wants to appropriate it, so typically they write a huffy letter, the small business with a vaguely-similar mark protests, and a court or national trademark arbitrator says 'there there, your businesses are totally different and it's OK to have slightly similar names because consumers will be able to tell them apart.'

However it's quite unusual to see two logos that are virtually identical as in this case, and arguably AirBNB is in the business of automating short term lets so there's a possibility of confusion with this firm that offers automation services. The automation firm might have a legitimate complaint for having been using their logo first, but it also depends on which company filed the mark with the USPTO first (which I haven't checked). I'd guess a likely outcome is that AirBnB pays the automation firm some cash to avoid a dispute.


Looks like Airbnb and Automation Anywhere are already working together on this.

http://venturebeat.com/2014/07/16/airbnbs-new-logo-looks-a-l...


The piece starts with the companies on equal footing and ends with the logo belonging to AirBNB. To me that implies AirBNB is buying them off.


It's a win-win...and AirBNB will surely be able to negotiate the bill of its design consultants steeply downward for their lack of due diligence.


Seeing the favicons while having both sites open in different tabs drives the point home even more.

They're even using a very similar shade of orange.

I do wonder if I was making a logo how hard it would be to search for similar ones though. It seems like it would be harder to google than a name.


you could try image search. Image search based on an existing image is fairly easy with google image search.

https://images.google.com/




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