The winner of a logo competition aimed at promoting tourism in a Chinese city has been accused of ripping off Disney's distinctive font.
The government of Dalian in northeastern China published the winning design of its "Dalian has quality gifts" competition on December 11.
But internet users soon identified that the lettering looked a lot like that of Walt Disney's signature company logo.
The city's Bureau of Culture and Tourism, which is in charge of the competition, said on Tuesday it was aware of the plagiarism accusations and was conducting an investigation.
"The investigation is currently under way and the results will be announced as soon as possible," the statement said, adding that competition entrants were required to guarantee the intellectual property rights of their works.
"Works violating others' intellectual property rights, once verified, will be disqualified from the competition and their rewards will be recovered," the statement said, referring to the $4,300 prize money.
The winning design, by Su Zhanying from Dalian Yinji Tourism Culture Development Company, features a lighthouse above stylized blue water, accompanied by the word "Dalian" in Roman script and Chinese characters.
In its announcement of the winner, Dalian city government said the design, called City Logo of Dalian, combined "the Chinese and English fonts with the city's visual symbols and names into one" and reflected "the characteristics of the city … in a few simple strokes."
Logonews.cn, a Chinese website dedicated to logo designs, questioned the originality of the winning work on Monday in a post on the Twitter-like social network Weibo.
"At first glance, I felt the logo was all right, except the image was too complicated with too many colors, but then I found something very similar when I checked the font … Isn't it the same font of the Disney logo?"
The post went on to say that the winning design appeared to have copied the letters from the Disney logo and "even the graphic part is suspected of taking other references." The article pointed to the similarity of the circle around the lighthouse to the semi-circle behind the Disney castle.
"With so much copying, how dare the designer sign his name?" the post ended.
Even the Chinese characters may not be original.
On Tuesday, Chinese calligrapher Ye Genyou took to Weibo to say that the characters used in the Dalian city logo were from his own Xing style. He said the designer was not authorized to use them.
Other internet users soon found similarities with other existing designs, claiming the lighthouse image looked like the one designed by a Philippines online artist known as "blueii" called The Brisbane Pathway.
The stylized blue water was also said to be very similar to the city logo of Lianshui county in the eastern province of Jiangsu.
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