That\u2019s when a 21-year-old player from the University of North Carolina was asked to leap toward the basket, ball in hand, and perform a grand jet\u00e9\u2014the classic ballet move where a dancer jumps and spreads their legs wide. That young man was Michael Jordan, and his pose would go on to become the logo for the $6 billion brand<\/a> that, to this day, bears his name.\u00a0<\/p>\n In a new short documentary titled Jumpman<\/em> that premiered at the Tribeca film festival, the photographer who took that picture, Jacobus \u201cCo\u201d Rentmeester, alleges his work was copied to create the famous logo.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThere is a certain brutality by major corporations,\u201d Rentmeester told Fortune<\/em>. \u201cThey just acquire what they think they need\u2014that\u2019s fine\u2014but then they don\u2019t want to accept the sharing of the creative process. They just want to take it and drop the rest in the garbage.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Tom Dey, the director of the movie and Rentmeester\u2019s son-in-law, said the picture of Jordan \u201cwildly succeeded in his goal, which is that it will never be forgotten, but it exacted a great personal price\u201d on Rentmeester, who is now 88. \u201cSo there\u2019s great irony in that for me.\u201d<\/p>\n Nike<\/a> did not respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n Companies often take great care in safeguarding their logos, which are among the most critical pieces of branding and become shortcuts for millions (if not billions) of consumers worldwide. No longer just a sketch meant to draw a shopper\u2019s wandering eye in a store, a logo is now a representation of a brand\u2019s values<\/a>, its ability to connect<\/a> with people. It should, in theory, represent something.\u00a0<\/p>\n However, that level of visibility also makes them prime candidates for the legal battles\u2014either between companies complaining their logos are too similar or from a designer claiming they were ripped off. Several famous logos have been alleged to have been replicated from other companies<\/a> that preceded them, usually inadvertently. While other times creators for hire, like Rentmeester, feel they haven\u2019t got their fair share.\u00a0<\/p>\n Jacobus Rentmeester<\/p>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n In Rentmeester\u2019s case, the photo he originally took was commissioned by Life<\/em> magazine, a publication known for working with renowned photographers like Robert Capa and Margaret Bourke-White. An elite athlete himself, Rentmeester represented his native Holland as a rower at the 1960 Olympics in Rome, before becoming a photographer. Over his career, Rentmeester photographed<\/a> the Vietnam War, the 1972 Olympics, and the Watts Riots, with some of his work appearing in Fortune <\/em>when it was still owned by Time Inc.\u00a0<\/p>\n For the Jordan assignment, Life<\/em> wanted something slightly unusual. \u201cI was asked to do a photo essay of athletes in outstanding situations,\u201d Rentmeester told<\/a> Adweek<\/em>, describing his assignment.\u00a0<\/p>\n Instead of putting Jordan on a basketball court, Rentmeester decided to photograph him outdoors, against the backdrop of a clear blue sky with his arms and legs splayed out. The idea was to capture Jordan\u2019s athleticism as if it were flight: \u201ca person in the air without gravity in the frame,\u201d he recalled.\u00a0<\/p>\n That picture, Rentmeester said, was then used as the basis for a later photo shoot<\/a> commissioned by Nike and shot by photographer Chuck Kuhn. In Kuhn\u2019s photograph, Jordan is seen in a similar pose over the Chicago city skyline vaulting toward an outdoor basketball hoop with an aluminum backboard and metal netting. Notably, in this version Jordan is wearing Nike sneakers rather than the New Balance ones he wore in Rentmeester\u2019s picture.\u00a0<\/p>\n Years later, in the late 1980s when Rentmeester was on assignment for Marlboro scouting locations in Painted Desert, Nev., he crossed paths with Kuhn when the two happened to be staying in the same motel.\u00a0<\/p>\n The culprits, Rentmeester and Dey claim, were the Nike art directors who reneged on a promise to credit him for his work. An ad agency working for Nike had reached out to Rentmeester for a print of his photograph. He agreed to send over copies of his work in exchange for $150 and an agreement his work wouldn\u2019t be copied or duplicated, according to correspondence viewed by Fortune<\/em>. \u201cThey ignored that, obviously,\u201d Rentmeester said.<\/p>\n Two weeks later, while taking a cab from Chicago\u2019s O\u2019Hare airport to the offices of ad agency Leo Burnett, Rentmeester saw a billboard with a strikingly similar image: a balletic Jordan spread-eagle, soaring toward a basketball hoop.\u00a0<\/p>\n Upon realizing this, Rentmeester threatened to sue Nike. \u201cIn my mind, it was completely a fraud case,\u201d Rentmeester said. \u201cThey had snookered me.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n He eventually backed down. In March 1985, Rentmeester instead accepted $15,000 for a two-year license to use his picture in North America, according to an invoice viewed by Fortune<\/em>. That agreement was never renewed after it expired 37 years ago, Dey wrote in an email. \u201cThey kept using it all these years without coming back to me,\u201d Rentmeester said.\u00a0<\/p>\n In 2015, Rentmeester made good on his threat of legal action, suing Nike in federal court<\/a> in Oregon, where the company is based. But that lawsuit left Rentmeester without the credit he had hoped for. The judge in the case didn\u2019t grant him the jury trial Rentmeester sought, ruling the two photographs were different enough as to have been separate works. Rentmeester eventually appealed the case to the Supreme Court, which declined to reopen it, upholding a ruling from the Ninth Circuit Court.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI felt very restricted because as a single individual taking on the law firms that Nike could produce, there seemed like very little chance that I would go far,\u201d Rentmeester said. \u201cThey simply ignored me because they felt they were powerful enough to just throw me under the bus in a certain way.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Nike\u2019s Air Jordan logo is hardly the first corporate logo to become embroiled in allegations of copying.\u00a0<\/p>\n In 2014, Airbnb<\/a> found that its triangular logo was virtually identical to that of software company Automation Anywhere. At the time, Airbnb said it was a coincidence the two were so similar. Eventually Automation Anywhere changed its logo, while Airbnb kept the one it still uses today.\u00a0<\/p>\n Air Jordan\u2019s parent company, Nike, had its famed swoosh logo designed by a college student in 1971. Carolyn Davidson, a design student at Portland State University, was asked by Nike founder Phil Knight (who at the time was teaching accounting at the university) if she\u2019d be willing to do some graphic design for his then fledgling shoe company, she told<\/a> ABC News in 2016. Eventually Knight picked the swoosh, which \u201che didn\u2019t love,\u201d according to Davidson. For her work, Davidson charged Knight $35<\/a>. He would later gift her some Nike stock and a swoosh-shaped ring.\u00a0<\/p>\n Davidson, though, is sanguine about the role she played in designing what would become one of the most recognizable logos in the world.\u00a0\u201cWhile I\u2019m proud of what I did, in some way I see it as just another design,\u201d she told ABC. \u201cIt was Phil and the employees at Nike that turned the business into what it was. If they didn\u2019t have the savvy, it would have been just another drawing.\u201c<\/p>\n Rentmeester, who was aware of Davidson\u2019s story, said he was never shown that sort of good faith from Nike. If he had been, then perhaps the years of animosity and lingering sense of injustice might have been avoided.<\/p>\n \u201cThe irony is that had they just hired him to retake his picture none of this would have happened,\u201d Dey said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n![\"Michael](\"https:\/\/fortune.com\/img-assets\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/JUMPMAN-Clean-16x9-01.png?w=1440&q=75\"\/)
<\/p>\nPhotographing Michael Jordan, a \u2018man without gravity\u2019<\/strong><\/h3>\n
Nike \u2018had snookered me\u2019<\/strong><\/h3>\n
Companies have been accused of copying logos before<\/strong><\/h3>\n