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Former New York Jets employee Jim Pons has filed a lawsuit against the team and the NFL over the use of a throwback logo that he created in the late 1970s.
Pons, who worked for the team for nearly three decades as the Jets’ film and video director, created the logo which looks like a jet flying over the letters “E-T-S” in the team name in 1978 – a fact that team has acknowledged.
The team even created a video this past spring revealing the origin of the logo design, calling Jim Pons “the man who drew history.”
“I thought it would be nice to just have the name and it kind of moving in a direction. And then I started fooling around with it and tilting the letters and then I thought a jet plane on the top of this would look pretty cool,” Pons said in the video. “I fooled around with it for a few days and it started to come into fruition and it started to look pretty good. And I gave it to them and they liked it and they used it. They took it and the next thing I knew it was the logo.”
The New York Jets used Jim Pons’ logo design on a full-time basis from 1978 all the way through 1997, but changed it for the 1998 season.
However, in 2022, the team reintroduced his logo on a part-time basis, calling the logo part of their “Legacy Collection” and using it twice in games during the 2023 season.
Then, this past spring, the Jets announced that they will be going back to using his iconic logo design full-time.
So now the 81-year-old former Jets employee wants to be paid and is suing the team and the NFL not only for unspecified damages, but to cancel the Jets’ trademark of his logo design, according to TMZ.
He also claims that he created the logo outside of the scope of his job with the team so it is his property. Therefore, Pons wants the Jets to cease using the logo on all their uniforms and merchandise that the team sells unless he gives his consent and is compensated for it.
“We are aware of the complaint,” the Jets said in a statement to the New York Post. “The mark in question has been registered with the United States Patent and Trademark Office for nearly 50 years. The mark has been used continuously in numerous iterations since that time. We find this claim baseless and without merit.”