Newtown Jets

[Kit]

The Newtown Jets are a former (in fact, the first ever) first-grade Rugby League team in Australia. The club closed its first grade operations a fair time ago (1983), but has continued on in the Premier League as the Sydney Roosters' Farm team.

In my opinion that makes them at least semi-pro, which would, one would think, make them liable for prosecution in terms of logo theft (and I refuse to believe it's not).

Do you think the NY Jets would have a case? Is it really all that important?

Or am I just a nut who can't understand how a semi-pro team can take a pro-team's logo seemingly without permission?

[Squizzy]

I think the key lies in the title of your post - "Newtown Jets, Startlingly similar to the NY Jets?"

Yes it is "startingly similar" because it was based on the New York logo, but it's not exactly the same.

Newtown changed their name from the "Bluebags" to the Jets in 1981 and adopted this logo. The New York Jets were not using their version of this logo in 1981.

The fact that the New York logo has a sightly different font for the NY and also uses a football as part of the design suggests enough of a difference. I agree though, "startingly similar", but not enough for a court action.

By the way, how do you know that Newtown are using the logo "seemingly without permission"?

And if we're going to be REALLY technical, Newtown are part of Cronulla's feeder system this year and won't be a part of the Sydney Roosters until 2006.