Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s new campaign, Make in India, an attempt to turn India into a global manufacturing hub has created quite a bit of noise in social media and most recently it appears for all the wrong reasons. The Make in India logo with the symbol of a lion with the cogs, was reportedly designed by the Indian subsidiary of a US Agency Weidon+Kennedy (W+K) [Anyone else see the irony] seemed very fancy and innovative until thenewsminute.com reported that there was an uncanny resemblance between the Make in India logo and the logo of the sponsored campaign of the Cantonal Bank of Zurich in Switzerland. The logo of the Swiss bank’s campaign was designed by Nadine Geissbulher and was launched in July 2013, over a year before the Indian Prime Minister started his.
The Government and the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion have come into action to assert that the logo is not a copy and is inspired from the Ashoka emblem, the official emblem of India. However, the truth behind this allegation is yet to be known.
Raja Selvam
Founder & Managing Attorney, Selvam & Selvam | Practice areas include Trademarks, Patents, Domain names & Business law. Visiting faculty, Department of Journalism, Madras University where I teach copyrights & trademarks law. Passionate about entrepreneurship, start-ups, stocks, farming, technology and law.
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