Former Jets Employee Is Suing Team, NFL Over Throwback Logo He Claims He Designed

Jim Pons, a former employee of the New York Jets in the 1970s, is suing his former employer and the NFL over claims that he designed one of the team's logos. 

Pons, who is seeking unspecified damages, filed the lawsuit claiming that he came up with the logo while working as the team's film and video director. 

The suit claims, according to TMZ, that Pons owns the logo and that he came up with the design outside the scope of his job when he was an employee of the Jets.

The suit asks for a judge to cancel the Jets’ trademark of the logo and Pons wants a ruling that prevents the football team from being able to use the design or sell merchandise with it on there without compensation or his consent.

"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."

A former employee of the Jets is suing the team claiming that he deserves compensation for coming up with one of the team's logos. (Photo by Luke Hales/Getty Images)

The logo up for debate is the logo that featured a jet across the letters ‘E-T-S.' The franchise started using the logo in 1978 and continued to do so until 1997 before changing it to an updated logo only to bring the throwback logo back into the fold in 2022.

An interesting wrinkle in the Pons lawsuit situation is that he was featured in a video released by the team earlier this year explaining the history of the logo and how he came up with the imagery. While he comes across as happy during the video, the lawsuit claims that he was upset about the situation.

"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, who is 81 years old, 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."