You may be having your own issues with the new $400 shoes from the prodigal sons of basketball, but the owner of a yoga studio in Canada is claiming they ripped her off…by stealing her logo design.
Hana Engel, the owner of Modern Body yoga studio in Ottawa, says the Melo Ball 1 (the first signature shoe of 16-year-old basketball kid LaMelo Ball) borrows enough from her own MB logo that it’s worth defending.
The new sneakers are the first product for the enterprising LaVar Ball, father of new LA Lakers rookie Lonzo Ball and CEO of the new apparel company Big Baller Brand (in other words: he’s the stage dad of sports, a sort of Joe Jackson of basketball).
Engel, who owns the trademark for her logo in Canada as of April, maintains that there’s too much similarity to just let it go.
“I don’t want it to be, ‘oh she’s a little yoga studio in Ottawa Canada, who cares we can get away with this,’ it’s my logo and I protected it for a reason,” Modern Body owner Hana Engel told CTV News.
According to CTV: “Engel has reportedly already had her lawyer send Big Baller Brand a letter and intends to take the company to court if it fails to abide by the copyright law.”
That’s a mighty, and likely expensive, step for a little yoga studio to take against a steamroller of an already big bball biz (Jay-Z just bought a bunch of pairs of the sneakers), but hey, if there’s anything we don’t have to tell a yoga studio owner it’s to go with your gut.
MB1 sneaker logo
Modern Body logo via facebook
Upon closer review, our hack team of logo inspectors can’t conclusively call it a rip off. A simple Google image search draws up other MB suspects bearing a striking resemblance. The MBs are certainly similar, but then again, how many ways can you put an M and B together without them looking similar?
What do you think? Too close for comfort? Or a non-starter?
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Great post on branding and protecting your brand. Interesting. I’m certain the copyright lawyers will hash it out. She may get a small settlement to save steamroller on costs to litigate?
It looks like its inspired, but not a rip-off – instead of a slightly tweaked forgery, we have a notably different logo. Non-issue.
My God, what a total embarrassment. YOGINI WANNABE ALERT.
With each passing month, Yoga World gets scarier and scarier. The narcissism that is behind her thinking her logo was infringed upon is just off the charts monstrous.
Just look at the image search. It’s a non-starter, plenty of very similar, older MB logos out there.
Interesting post!!
You must do some talks to save this studio….
Great Post.
I can see her point, but there are so many businesses in the world, and a limited vocabulary, we’re going to have similarities here and there
Great Post.