A dispute lodged against Wolverhampton Wanderers by a man who claimed that the English football club copied his badge design has been thrown out of the High Court.
Earlier this month, reports indicated that 71-year-old Peter Davies had taken the Premier League side to court, claiming he designed the wolf’s head motif used across the club’s branding.
The retired building industry manager said he had first designed the crest as a schoolboy in the 1960s and entered it into an art competition with a local newspaper.
However, throwing the claim out of court this month, Mr Justice Nugee said Mr Davies faced “insuperable obstacles” in proving his copyright claim.
The court documents, now available publically, show that Mr Davies composed the sketches after a teacher asked him to demonstrate an “understanding of hexagrammum mysticum”.
The theorem, which states that “if six arbitrary points are chosen on a conic and joined by line segments in any order forming a hexagon, then the three pairs of opposite sides of the hexagon meet at three points which lie on a straight line”, was first produced by French mathematician Blaise Pascal in the 1600s.
However, Wolverhampton Wanderers said the logo was the original work of graphic designer Ian Jackson and was “revamped” by Jonathan Russell in 2002.
Speaking before the court, Mr Jackson said he would “never” plagiarise another designer’s work and it was “impossible” that he would have seen Mr Davies’ sketches.
According to the BBC, the pensioner now faces legal fees and costs estimated to be in the region of £450,000.
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