“Nike” Plagiarism or Coincidence?

As the title suggests, are Nike guilty of plagiarism? Of what you may say, well of their internationally recognisable logo and name I say!

As the title suggests, are Nike guilty of plagiarism? Of what you may say, well of their internationally recognisable logo and name I say!

I ask the question because it has recently come to my attention that Nike may well be a few thousand years behind the original owners of the logo in using it as an advertising and promotional tool. I met an old gentleman called Jose in a bar one day last December whom insisted he was, or at least his family were, the rightful owners of the iconic logo.

This is his story as best as I can remember it.

A few thousand years ago when man was still living basically, and cave houses were not the sole right of the Spanish, a couple of brothers were trading animal skins such as sabre tooth tiger, wolf, bear and the occasional mammoth.
The brothers were called Kevin and Nigel and they were building quite a name for themselves as honest men within the local tribes.
One day while out checking their traps Kevin found an interesting piece of rock amongst the rubble they had dug out of one of their sabre tooth tiger pits, so he dropped it in his bag to look at later.
When they returned to their two up two down cave and had sorted out the days catch Kevin sat on his favourite seat by the fire put his feet up and looked at the rock he had found.

It appeared to be sandstone about the size of an orange and after cleaning it up he found that it had a strange white mark made of some sort of crystal or mica across it. Then he realised when he turned it round it was actually the shape of a tick.

He stuck it on the mantelpiece and it became quite a talking point when family and friends visited.

A few years later there were more people trading very similar products to the brothers but of lesser quality so Kevin and Nigel decided they had to do something to distinguish their wares from the others and came up with the idea of marking their products with a logo of some sort.

They proceeded to have a brain storming session and that is when the rock came forward as a good logo because not only was it already known locally as a talking piece but the tick represents something that is correct so the brothers decided to use it on all of their products from then on.

The other major point to come out of the session was they needed a trading name for their business as they were known purely as the honest brothers in the two up and two down.

After discarding names like Lynx, Puma, Eagle and Mars as not good enough they decided to use the first two letters of their names, Nigel wanted “Nike” but Kevin was the oldest and he said that it sounded daft and at least “Keni” sounded like a name so they went with the latter.

That then is how the logo and trading name was set up originally and obviously it was long before copyright and trademark laws were thought of.

My elderly friend then told me how through the following generations the company grew, and promoting large events with their trademark logo became a common occurrence.  He told me how the company sponsored the big events of their time such as the opening of the pyramids of Giza, the ancient Olympic Games, the rise of the Roman Empire, Christopher Columbus’s discovery of the Americas, Custer’s campaign against the Sioux Indians (Backed the wrong side there?) and has documental evidence to back it up?

The photograph of the Nike Rock here is of the genuine article which I have held personally and can assure you that it has not been touched up, air brushed, or digitally enhanced in any way shape or form. It fits snugly in two hands and weighs about a kilo.

I asked my friend what had happened to the company, why had they not continued using the logo until present day, and what his thoughts were on Nike?

He said, “I think someone in Nike found one of the old photographs or newspaper clippings and thought it would be a good idea to use it. For goodness sake they have just turned the letters round and put a curve on the tick, how obvious can you get! I can give you a lot of reasons for the decline of Keni, like bad management, bad investment, the invention of the combustion engine, the stock market crash etc. but when it comes down to it, …..S**t happens”.

Sent in by Bill Anderson Abanilla