Not protected

Just before Chinese New Year, we got hold of a free magazine distributed all over Shanghai. Did not really paying close attention to any of the content (mostly advertising), until I came across an advertisement for a yoga studio.

The logo of a girl sitting in a yoga pose with the yellow orange circle against the deep red background was a design I had made about 4 years ago for a yoga instructor! Just imagine the shock I got when I saw the design I did blatantly copied! The yoga studio called Shanghai Yoga has directly copied the logo off the yogasian.com website I designed before. They used the graphics as is!

To top it off, after inquiring about my intellectual property rights, I am told that in China unless I have registered the identity myself, I am not covered in anyway and therefore cannot sue this studio for using my design!!!

My only consolation (this is not the adjective I would like to use in this case but...) is that the design is too good that someone would actually re-use it...