Facebook sued over Calibra’s look-alike logo

Over the summer, Facebook unveiled its Libra cryptocurrency and the Calibra subsidiary that would help manage it. Facebook also unveiled a logo for Calibra and, well, it looks somewhat similar to the logo of Current, a startup bank. Apparently, Current agreed, so much so that it has filed a lawsuit against Facebook, alleging trademark infringement.

The suit names four defendants: Facebook, Calibra, a Facebook subsidiary that owns IP related to Calibra, and Character, the design agency that made the Calibra logo. You might be surprised to see a design agency named in the lawsuit — but Character apparently designed both logos, according to the lawsuit.

The two logos were apparently designed three years apart. Current claims that it started using its logo in August 2016, while Facebook’s logo for Calibra was revealed in June of this year.

An intellectual property lawyer that CoinDesk spoke with sums up the case well:

“It is suspicious that the defendant’s logo came out of the same firm that created the plaintiff’s logo,” Howard Shire, a partner in the Intellectual Property Department of Pepper Hamilton LLP, told CoinDesk.

We’ll have to wait for more details of the case to come to light (if they ever do) to know about exactly why the two logos are so similar. I guess there’s always the chance that different teams at Character made similar logos three years apart, or that Facebook and Calibra had no idea that its logo was just like Current’s. But the similarity sure does look suspicious.