Hey Canadian Olympic Committee! Hands Off Our Logo

We like our Interactive Male logo a lot. It's an I. It's an M. It's two men leaning in toward each other. They might be holding hands. It looks like this:

It's clean and simple, and we think it does an excellent job of representing our brand.

Unfortunately, not everyone agrees. The Canadian Olympic Committee has decided we shouldn’t use it anymore. Why? Apparently it resembles images used to represent Olympics events—in the ‘70s! They look like this:

Are there similarities? Sure. They both kind of look like every stick figure we've ever seen. What's more, (and not that we’re not creative around here, because we are), we readily admit we based our design off a piece of freely available clip art.

Regardless, the COC is concerned that someone is going to see our logo and mistake Interactive Male as being sanctioned by the Olympics, or assume that gay chat is now an Olympic sport, so they’ve challenged the trademark application that we filed in 2005.

Now, we like the Olympics as much as the next guys, and we’re really excited that Vancouver is hosting the Winter Games in 2010. But, come on, really? This feels like another display of heavy-handedness from the folks who brought us an epic battle with Vancouver's own Olympia Pizza, and trademarked "With Glowing Hearts" from our national anthem. Once again, the COC is flexing their muscles, and that's a challenge you don't want to make to the boys at Interactive Male.

Frankly, their assertion is ridiculous, so today we announced our intention to fight to retain our logo. It's the visual representation of our brand. To thousands of gay men, it is immediately recognizable as the chatline that allows them to meet and date in a safe, trusted place, the chatline that participates in several pride festivals every year, that has donated over $1,000,000 to gay charities since 1995. As a proud sponsor of the gay community, we are used to fighting for what we believe in, and this is no exception.

Wish us luck! We might be the little guy, but we're not going to take this lying down.

Read the news release