An AI-powered aggregator newsletter publisher has changed its logo in response to a legal threat from Buzzfeed.
Buzzfeed got in touch with Trending Now in July after Press Gazette published a story about the business, which had exceeded one million subscriptions across 27 B2B verticals within two years of its launch without employing any journalists.
Buzzfeed issued a “cease and desist” letter over the Trending Now logo, which featured a circle containing an arrow pointing up and to the right with a kink downwards and up again in the middle.
Press Gazette received a similar letter after our original article included a screenshot of the Trending Now site in which the logo could be seen. We agreed to remove the image but not remove the full article.
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Trending Now said it had not realised the close similarity its logo, designed in-house, held to Buzzfeed’s trademarked version until the copyright letter arrived.
However it agreed that they looked “almost identical” and agreed to change its design within 90 days. Trending Now’s new logo features a straight arrow pointing upwards from the edge of a circle and is in the process of being fully rolled out.
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Trending Now managing director Joe Newton told Press Gazette that during the redesign process, they noticed that the “zigzag icon is like the globally used kind of symbol for the term trending”.
“So when we were searching for different variations of that, they’re all pretty similar. I mean, don’t get me wrong, the Buzzfeed trademarked version and our version was very similar, but it’s that zigzag arrow is kind of the commonly used icon for the word trending. So it sort of seems a bit funny to us: it’s like if someone was to trademark the infinity symbol, do you know what I mean?”
Newton specifically cited the arrows on the logos for Google Trends and business media company Morning Brew, although neither are in a circle like Buzzfeed’s. A similar symbol has also been used on a Tiktok Trending report.
Trending Now’s designer concluded that the zigzag arrow in a circle to symbolise trending was “a bit outdated anyway”. Newton added: “Why not turn it into a positive? It definitely has been a positive because we’ve got a better logo, it’s been modernised now and maybe we’ve even modernised the icon for the term trending.”
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