Court Tells Disney to Pull Go.com Logo

dkh2 writes "Today on ZDNet: A U.S. District Court has denied a request by Disney, InfoSeek and others to stay a preliminary injunction against their familiar green and yellow logo. The injunction orders Disney to remove the logo immediately from all broadcast and internet media and gives them 60 days to remove it from other more solid forms." And Disney/Infoseek has started to comply. You can see the change at Go.com right now.

Comments

Because...

[JPelorat]

Sure, they're obviously different - when you put them side by side. Trouble is, that would rarely happen on a website or any other medium. The design elements (rectangular yellow border, green circle, white lettering of 'GO', hell, the font is the EXACT same) are such that Disney's version could indeed cause confusion, if only one logo is seen.

People rarely consciously 'see' advertising anymore (what ad banners have you seen during your current surfing session? Name them all, the companies and products they're pitching, please. See?) - it's all taken in as vague patterns, and used to recognise or remember a certain item later when it's seen again. Guaranteed, if you walked past 30 billboards in a day, each with one or the other of those logos in the corner, at the end of the day, you would *not* be able to tell how many of each there were - all you would remember would be a square border, green circle, and something about 'GO' in it... and the associations you make with the logo and the content of the boards may not be something that GoTo.com wants you to make.

That's what all this is about. Consider - it wouldn't be any different from the GoTo/Disney situation if I came up with a logo that had a very realistic-looking burger bun surrounding the words 'Burger Town' in the Burger King colors and font. I'd get my ass sued off, and rightfully so.