One of the most iconic logos in sport is the subject of a new lawsuit in Manhattan, it has emerged. The New York Yankees’ top hat logo has adorned the baseball giants’ uniforms and merchandise for over 70 years but Tanit Buday claims her uncle created the design and was never paid for it. While she seeks unspecified damages for copyright infringement, the Yankees insist there is no basis for her claim and they have not yet been served with a lawsuit. In a claim filed in Manhattan Federal Court on Monday, Ms Buday, of Yonkers, New Jersey, says her uncle Kenneth Timur was commissioned by the Yankees to design a logo after then owners Jacob Ruppert and Del Webb learnt of his skill as an artist from his Brooklyn-based sister. She alleges he learnt the logo had been adopted when he moved to America in 1947 and, when asked to fashion an updated version for the team’s 50th anniversary, altered the logo with a signature ‘P’, so it read ‘1P03-1952’ on players’ uniforms, instead of ‘1903-1952’. According to the complaint, Ms Buday took the logos to design analyst Rob Wallace who concluded it to be ‘evident that they are so significantly similar that they could not have been created independently from one another’.
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