June 3, 2019

The defendant, Wolverhampton Wanderers Football Club (1986) Ltd, has since 1979 used a wolf’s head seen head-on with a stylised geometric appearance as its badge or crest. The Club commissioned its design from Ian Jackson in 1979. In 2002, a reworked version of the wolf’s head was commissioned from another designer, Jonathan Russell. It has been used by the Club on its players’ kit ever since.

The claimant, Peter Davies, claimed that he had designed a wolf’s head design when a young teenager in the early sixties, which he had entered into a local art competition. He said that his design was strikingly similar to Mr Jackson’s 1979 logo and that Mr Jackson had copied it consciously or subconsciously.

Mr Davies’ claim was based on drawings dated 1961 to 1963 and labelled “Peter Davies” or “P Davies” that Mr Davies had only recently come across. The drawings showed an angular wolf’s head consisting of geometrical shapes in the form of hexagons, circles and a lattice of criss-crossing lines.

Mr Justice Nugee found that there was no doubt that Mr Davies’ drawings had a considerable degree of similarity to the 1979 logo designed by Mr Jackson. In each case, the wolf’s head was seen face-on, was symmetrical, stylised and marked by angular straight lines. They were not identical, Nugee J said, but they had “a noticeable resemblance”.

Nugee J made an assumption that Mr Davies had in fact entered into an art competition, but it had not been proved exactly which art competition, as Mr Davies had entered many competitions. Further, Nugee J said that it was impossible to know exactly what the design submitted looked like, since it had been lost.

As for Mr Jackson, he gave evidence that he had designed the 1979 logo himself, that he had not been provided with any specific design ideas or given any sketches or other materials by anyone else, that he had not copied and would not ever copy anyone else’s work, and that he had never seen any of Mr Davies’ designs.

Mr Jackson had been a lecturer at Wolverhampton College of Art between 1958 and 1962 and, as such, had known both of the judges in the particular art competition Mr Davies claimed he had entered as they were lecturers in the same Department. There was therefore a possibility of contact between Mr Jackson and the judges, but Nugee J could not accept that transmission had occurred in this way, or in any other way. In Nugee J’s view it was “wholly implausible”.

As for the similarities already found, given that Mr Davies’ actual competition design had been lost, no precise comparison could be made between it and Mr Jackson’s 1979 logo. Therefore, the only approach was to compare Mr Jackson’s design with the sort of designs Mr Davies was producing in the 1960s. The question was whether the similarities were so marked and so striking as to lead to a conclusion that, despite the implausibility of copying, the suggestion that the art competition judges had given Mr Davies’ design to Mr Jackson should be accepted as the only possible explanation or at any rate the more probable one. Nugee J had no hesitation in saying that he was not persuaded that they were. The 1979 logo and Mr Davies’ designs had been produced independently of each other. The claim was dismissed. (Mr Peter Davies v Wolverhampton Wanderers Football Club (1986) Ltd [2019] EWHC 1252 (Ch) (15 May 2019) — to read the judgment in full, click here).